We all love you, Yui
by TheOneAndOnly1993
Summary: A brush with death shines a light on Yui's depression - hidden from all, even her own sister, even herself. What follows is a vicious tug of war between Yui's own poor self image and the people who love her with all their hearts. But how can either side win, when one believes the time spent on her is worthless and to the other, it's irreplaceable and precious.
1. Mugi

"_Oh, right… I walked down this path during orientation as well… Thinking that I had to do something. Wondering what I had to do. Thinking that I was going to become an adult." _

Yui allowed herself swept up in all manner of distractions that day—silly little bubbles of "nothin' really" replacing these heart-wrenching realities.

"_Hey, me. The me of that day, don't worry anymore. You'll find something soon enough: you'll find something that you could do. Something you can lose yourself in. And a place that… a place that… that means more than anything to you!" _

* * *

"_I'm really sorry, guys… Now that I think about it, I'm always causing trouble for you… And it's always at important times like this—!" _

"_Heh… Come on, you could at least tie your tie." _

"_We all think you're the greatest, Yui." _

Yui inhaled deep, to keep from wailing right then and there.

_These girls love me, _she realized.

..._And I love them. _

* * *

It was about a year later, on the eve of their graduation—one week to be precise—when Houkago Tea Time reckoned with the shattering of not just their special little club, but their resident ray of sunshine, Yui Hirasawa. Including, but not limited to, their preconceived notions of her and, by extension, the strong albeit uncomplicated friendship tethering their hearts to hers.

This tale does have a happy ending. But in order for it to be considered as such, what comes before must be otherwise.

* * *

**Mugi**

Orange shafts stabbed through the window, bathing Mio and Ritsu in sunlight as they wore down each other's nerves (specifically (and literally) a circular region atop Ritsu's head in her case).

On her left, Mugi observed Azusa at the table's end staring the duo down. Or so it would seem—something further, invisible, caught her eye. Something specific that weighed on her mind, occasionally, across the last month whenever the conversation would lull.

Mugi knew it uncouth to impose concern on somebody after they already declined it. She instead offered Azusa a slice of berry tart.

"Try this, Azusa-chan," she said. "Today's blend emphasizes the boysenberry aftertaste. I think it will make your spirit fairly happy!"

Their little kouhai failed to suppress neither a smirk nor the eagerness with which she reached out. "If you say so." Azusa took the plate. Taking a bite, the aloof, thoughtful glaze over her eyes became alight with a minor sugar rush.

And suddenly: "Pbbbbt."

"Honestly," sighed Mio, informing Mugi that it was Ritsu (_You never knew with Mio-chan!_).

"But it's _so _quiet here, and bored," the drummer drawled.

An amusing image conjured itself in Mugi's mind. "The room itself is bored?"

"What?" muttered Azusa.

"Just bored." Ritsu, leaning back, splayed her hands to the ceiling. "The general spirit of boredom permeates every corner of this room. Every crevice." Dramatically, she thumped her skinny chest with a fist. "Without Yui, mine own clown in crime—!"

"You're just a sad, lonely clown." Mio smiled wryly.

Ritsu's face, lowering, leveled Mio to rubble with a glare severe and uncharacteristic enough to stir unease within Mugi—despite this being a joke. So she pursed her lips, spectating the punchline's delivery.

But Ritsu shook her head. "No." She tilted back.

"'N-no?'" said Mio. "What do you mean, 'no?' What are you denying here?"

Ritsu, gazing toward the ceiling, jammed a finger across the table. "That. That 'joke' you made," she replied, making air quotes.

Mio lowered her head, somber stare on her best friend. "I didn't go too far, did I?" In Mugi's personal opinion, joking "too far" would be one of those "medicine tastings" for Ritsu, the queen of driving Mio to tears over un-friendly jabs.

Ritsu shook her head. "You didn't go anywhere, Mio. You didn't even leave the parking lot! Like, that? Oh, goodness gracious me, _that… _was the worst joke in history. Absolutely awful."

Mio sunk to her chin. "Okay…"

"Wretched."

"Okay, Ritsu!"

"_Slime._"

Cheeks ruddy and runny, Mio cried out for Ritsu to stop, clamping her ears shut. Ritsu merely laid back, cradling her head, all self-satisfied in her smile. Mugi giggled, unable to help herself—these two had been a delight the moment she met them.

But the absence of one such important friend was made all the more obvious in the ensuing quiet. "I hope Yui arrives in time," she told the shuddering blonde reflected in her tea.

"Me too," said Mio, saddened by whatever worrisome notions crossed her mind.

"We don't have many days left for this," Mugi continued.

Ritsu hadn't moved, her eyes now shut. "She'll seriously consider traveling back in time. Watch."

Azusa had been quiet; Mugi watched from the inconspicuous confines of her peripherals, saying, "I'll enjoy the ensuing antics. Yui would be sad to have missed any of them, I would hate for that to taint her final week here."

Tiny hands wrapped tighter around a teacup.

_So that's what you're hiding, Azusa-chan? _Mugi realized. It wasn't news, however, but a long-drawn conclusion. It's why she and the girls, behind Azusa's back, had been collaborating on a special present for their younger since London.

"It's not like she'll tumble into a deep depression over it." Ritsu shrugged. "It's a single afternoon. We got the rest of our lives ahead of us."

"I don't know about that," laughed Mio. "But we'll at least have another four years together."

Ritsu fell forth, drummin the table. "Heck yeah, baby! University!"

"You'll be eating those words, I'm sure!" Mio laughed into a fist, as did Mugi—such a new and exciting experience was upon her, and with three out of her four best, most dearest friends in the world.

Her phone sang as she was ready to assess Azusa once more—only catching a crumpled chin before the sound startled Mugi.

As she took out her phone, Mio wondered, "What do you think is keeping Yui? It shouldn't take her this long to walk from home."

"It's Ui-chan, senpai."

_It's Nodoka, _Mugi read, thumb tapping the green button.

"Exactly!" said Ritsu. "You'd think she wouldn't have wanted to keep Yui from coming, considering."

Mugi stepped away from the banter, crossing the room. In the quiet, in its stillness, Azusa's soft voice rang loud: "Normally, sure. But today, Ui-chan was so antsy and unfocused in class that she couldn't do anything, and wouldn't if she didn't address Yui-senpai now."

"Oh? What's up with Ui-chan?"

"It's personal. I won't say."

The line had been too silent for too long. "Nodoka-chan?" Mugi sang.

"Oh, man, does that mean we're missing Ui-chan's inevitable meltdown? Is that what this is?"

"Ritsu, have some concern…"

"Of sorts," Azusa replied. "Though not for the reasons your thinking, Ritsu-senpai."

"Nah, it's gotta be: Hirasawa Ui-chan—snapping at last! An epic seventeen years in the making!" Ritsu bellowed.

Though humorous, concern overshadowed Mugi's heart to the perpetual silence, and she pressed a finger in her open ear. "Nodoka-chan, is… is this one of those 'butt-dials?'"

And then brokenly, drowned in what resembled an auditorium's worth of chatter, Mugi's ear rang with the cry of, "Ts-Tsumugi-san?!"

Mugi flinched away, faintly hearing her friends tease one another some several thousand miles away. And there they remained once the ringing abated.

She knew Nodoka to be a composed, collected, mature young woman.

This couldn't have been her.

"N-Nodoka-chan? Is that you?"

"Tsumugi-san," she gasped.

Mugi looked to her phone, fearing the call dropped. It hit the one minute mark instead. She replaced it. "What's wrong?"

Everything became dampened by a dull ring: the banter at her back and the breath passing her lips, the crowded room-chatter wherever Nodoka was, Mugi's frantic heartbeat.

There was simply no other reason for Nodoka to reach out like this.

But it had to be.

For the obvious was too horrible, too nightmarish, to be real.

"What happened?!" True silence filled the room—Mugi had risen her voice, her emotions lurching so bad it'd cracked.

"Yui…" Nodoka's voice crackled. "Yui, she… _she… she was hit by a car, Tsumugi!_"

The hardwood shattered beneath Mugi's feet, or so it felt. "What?!" she hissed, holding the phone in front of her. _Is-is Yui-chan alive?! Is she alive, Nodoka-chan?!_

Or, _Is this a joke?! This is a joke she's playing! _

The more she thought about it, the less sense it made: Nodoka, of all people, wouldn't seriously deliver this news over the phone.

But if she was right…

The phone was such a tiny thing in her palms, trembling so bad it was impossible to make out the timestamp or Nodokoa's name.

"Are you still there, Tsumugi?" she faintly heard—only possible in the absolute silence of the clubroom.

Mugi enunciated carefully, "Nodoka, is Yui-chan still alive?" Chairs screeched as they flew back behind Mugi, the phone replaced on her ear. "If she is, then… h'ah, then I'm afraid you lied! Because car accidents k-kill people… and Yui-chan can't be dead. She's my friend." It was as simple as that. Simple. "Nodoka?!" So why wasn't she answering? "Talk, I demand it!"

Three bodies crowded around Mugi. She held the phone up so all could hear: "I don't know, I'm sorry. She's in the emergency room now, but… but it all happened so fast, what happened before, that I can't believe it's her! Sh-she was crying to me and apologizing… I was on my way home when we crossed paths. We went for tea, and it all seemed normal until she burst out sobbing! And when she was done, before I could even get a word in Yui made a dash for the door, _across the street—!_" A cry on the other end, inciting Mio to shed hers around the hand clamping her mouth shut. "It was so horrible! My childhood friend was hurt and I don't even know if she meant to do that—!"

"_Of course she didn't!" _Ritsu snatched the phone from Mugi's palm, scratching it in the rush. "Yui's a ditz and a half, but she's not some idiot who runs in front of cars wondering what would happen! How could you even say that about her!? I thought you were her friend!" Nodoka was silent for one second. "Nodoka!"

Another heartbeat. "Listen," Nodoka's voice came gravelly, "I want you girls to tell me if Yui-chan has ever... said anything. Something which made you worried about her, if only for half a second."

"No. Never." Any other time, Ritsu and Azusa would make a jab about their friend's thought process.

Nodoka hummed. "It will be much easier if you four come to the hospital. I've already contacted Ui, she's on her way as well." Mugi's heart sank - until now it ached so bad it couldn't beat. Goodness knows what Yui's loving little sister was feeling right now, especially - if Mugi were in her shoes - having been the "reason" Yui was anywhere but here with the band.

"Wait, -N-Nodoka-san." Mio leaned forward, both fists clutching, combing, clawing and twisting her hair. "Why did you ask that earlier? Did..." she croaked, tears welling anew as she clamped her mouth, snuffled. She quivered the words, "Did our Yui-chan say anything about us before she..._ sh-she_..."

On the other line, a somber grunt. "Everything she said was... well, I'd say 'me,' but it was more 'us.' Things I've long-since forgotten about in some cases, others for things I'd never held against her. And..." A shaky exhale. "And I kept telling her that, Mio-san, I kept telling her over and over that she was my best friend and yet..."

A sob.

"Did I do this?" Nodoka muttered. "Is it my fault?"

"Yui was her happy old self all day today," Mugi realized. "Nothing was different about her! This... this was just an accident." It had to be. Had to be. Nothing else made sense, it just wasn't the Yui they knew and loved.

Nodoka intruded, "I ask, Mugi-san, because the doctor has come to me more than once, asking similar questions. They've not given specifics, but Yui's faded in and out of consciousness all the way up to the ER. She seems to be... saying things that... that have... um..."

"Nodoka-san, please," Mio croaked, taking the phone in her hands. "Please, Yu-Yui's our... we..." Her face crumpled; she shook her head, unable to compose herself before shoving the phone back to Ritsu, only because Mugi couldn't bear its weight right now.

"I believe it goes without saying by this point," said Nodoka, "what the doctor is suggesting."

Something twisted within Mugi, twisted twisted twisted until snapping completely, grief shredding her innards. "She doesn't have depression!" cried a voice, Mugi's, she realized as the words snarled out of her, and her fist snapped around the phone. "Depression is when people are sad! They're sad, and they get pills to fix them! Yui-chan doesn't have depression! She's happy and she's simple and kind and-and-and _you're HORRIBLE for suggesting that, Nodoka-san! ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE!_"

"That can't be true. Yui can't be like that." All turned on the hollow, downcast face of Mio. "Because if she was really like that, then that would mean Yui-chan wants to kill herself."

"Oi, Mio," breathed Ritsu.

Mio wasn't looking, wasn't listening. She never did when she got like this: "Her cute face collapsing, her bright and happy eyes sunken. Yui-chan... a corpse eaten to the bone by maggots."

_What... is this? _

Mugi shoved the phone into Ritsu's chest.

_Why am I yelling like this? At poor Nodoka-san?! _

She paced away, away from the unbearable sight of... of any of it: of the girls, the clubroom, the tea set she served every day so gaily by a friend who accepted it with equal gusto. Who deep down was always miserable and wanted to kill herself and tried to and never told any of them probably because Mugi the Rich Airhead wouldn't possibly under-

The distant, statuesque state of Azusa—cupping both hands around her mouth, silently shedding tears—broke Mugi completely.

She wrapped around her kouhai, was ensnared in turn. They sobbed together, and didn't lighten the deathgrip on one another's hand throughout the painfully long, silent walk to Sawa-chan's car, and the painfully long, silent drive to the hospital.

_**K-on doesn't seem as popular in the fanfic world as it was in its heyday, which is why I'm giving this chapter a dry run instead of diving in. If I feel a few people want to see where the other five or so chapters go I will proceed. Hope you enjoyed if you got this far. **_


	2. Azusa

**Azusa**

Yui Hirasawa had depression.

No.

She _might_—she _might _have depression. Keyword being 'might,' in the same vein that climate change 'might' be unstoppable, unavoidable, and forever-looming overhead like a black, waterlogged thundercloud, ready to douse the world in an inevitable, horrible downpour.

So Yui Hirasawa might have depression.

She _might _have tried to kill herself.

She _**might **_have died.

She _**MIGHT **_have left this world thinking "Azu-nyan" considered her an occasionally humorous embarrassment.

Did she ever think that?

That is what depressed people think, right?

_...I've never thought such of you like that, Yui-senpai, _realized Azusa, the buildings flying by, Mugi's hand wringing all feeling from her fingers. _Where did this come from? Why am I thinking this now? Did I feel it deep down? Is that it? _

_Did _Yui-senpai _feel that deep down? _She could have, which in Azusa's mind meant she had to have—after all, Yui held perceived transgressions towards Nodoka close to heart years after the fact.

With that in mind, it didn't feel so crazy to think so conceitedly: _All those times I pushed her away… all those times I played the adult as senpai babied me. _

Memories surged forth of Yui latched around Azusa, squeezing her tiny frame with love—genuine, wanting affection for her younger. They flowed ceaselessly, up to her eyeballs past the point of bursting.

This sensation became a wet warmth teasing the roundness of her cheeks.

Azusa dug a forearm into her eyes—black stains like blood left behind on her navy-blue school jacket.

_Why… did I hit her in London? _Out of all the times they spent together, suddenly such an inconsequential misunderstanding flashed by. _She was just going to hug Giita, and I spent most of the trip… afraid? Of what? Of Yui-senpai liking me to a degree inappropriate for Japanese girls? _

_Why? _

_Why was that so scary I couldn't just talk to her about it? _

She would take it back, the elbow flying into Yui's gut. Even if Azusa's conceit was validated, even if Yui held such deep affection for her, even if she was going for something only an adult man and woman should share…

_I don't know. _Something coiled tight around her heart. _I don't know. Anything would have been better than what I did then and there. _

_Because… _

_Because if I didn't hit her like that…_

It'd have been once less notch on her fragile psyche.

Because, apparently, Yui might have depression, she might have tried to kill herself, _she might have died, and she might have left this world thinking "Azu-nyan" considered her an occasionally humorous embarrassment!_

No.

Please, no.

Let this all just be one big nightmare.

It was so unreal that it had to be—a bad dream Azusa would soon tear away from, lurching upright and gasping for breath as per the norm. All matted in sweat, recuperating her faculties for a few terrifying seconds before realizing, 'Ah, just a silly dream,' and thinking a heartbeat later, 'I look forward to seeing everybody in the music room.' It was routine, even the suffocating fear of losing her senp—her _friends _to time, and navigating her third year without them.

Azusa would never find herself bringing up the nightmare in conversation. Discussing it with her senpais would surely drag their mood down, paint her in a needy, childish light.

No, they didn't need that.

Not with graduation right around the corner. They had bigger, greater, more important things to worry about than the selfish sentiments of their tsundere of a junior.

The scenery changed, or it had when Azusa wasn't looking—suddenly they were tearing through a lobby, sparsely populated with judgemental stares, reeking sharp of cleaning fluids.

"Girls, there's no cause to rush! Hey, wait!"

Azusa's feet flew as well, apparently, as she was maintaining pace with her senpais and ignoring Sawako's protests.

The nightmare, now, was today's otherwise unremarkable bout of classes, the blissful ignorance in which Azusa believed her petty personal problems encompassed the world.

That none of her seniors struggled as she did with horrible, gut-wrenching turmoil they kept locked away from the judgement of... of friends close as family.

That Yui was little more than a cheeky child with a heart where her brain should be.

No, that was all a childish dream. Reality was this surreal nightmare Azusa found herself reckoning now. She deserved to be babied by Yui, to be teased "Azu-nyan" by peers and random passersby in school.

"Hirasawa Yui, where's she at?!" Ritsu rasped in time with her palm slapping the counter.

"Ritsu," hissed Mio.

The poor nurse stammered, probably believing she was the source of Ritsu's apparent ire: "A-are you friends or family, miss?"

Without looking, by the hair she yanked Mugi and Mio closer, crying over their cries, "Do we look like family to you?!"

Azusa felt it in her gut, the instant before Mio's face tightened harshly: her elbow flew into her girlhood friend's chin, Ritsu's head and hold whipping back. "You've been calm until now, Ritsu, you can maintain it a few seconds longer with less eyes around." Her wavering words, her blush, betrayed Mio's composed scolding.

"Calm? You think I've been calm?! I'm doing everything I can not to lose it over here!" Ritsu turned to the nurse, eyes flashing wetly. "Why's it matter if we're family or not? We know her, we wanna see her! You tellin' me we can't?"

"Uh, o-one second, miss." The nurse clacked away on her computer, "Hirasawa… Yui…"

"She's still in the ER," a soft voice rasped, so painfully familiar it jerked Azusa around before her senpais could react. For whatever reason, she didn't expect to hear it in this place.

Azusa couldn't find the right words before Mugi's raspy, "Ui-chan, y-you beat us here."

"Yeah." Ui Hirasawa gave a lopsided smile, the tissue kneading between all ten fingers like a stress toy as she was about to speak, only for her sweater-cloaked shoulders to throb, breath caught. "I ran and I ran and I didn't stop!" Fat tears spilled over Ui's flushed cheeks, curving round her shuddering, shattering grin.

_Ui… _Not once had the younger sister, the "reason" behind Yui not being with the club, crossed Azusa's staggering thoughts.

She pulled a Yui-senpai and latched herself around one of her best friends, emotions bared childishly rather than hidden beneath a veil of maturity.

And just like Yui, Azusa finally cried on the outside—and she wailed.

For Yui, for her stupid selfishness, for her regrets, for Ui, for the rest of the band and what they must be feeling, Azusa wailed for all the world to see.

She couldn't care less for some reason.

* * *

Nodoka and Ui had been seated in the blind spot of HTT's warpath to the front desk. The latter of whom stood silently behind the bickering, hyperventilating senpais, trying to find an opportunity to intrude.

Clearly, to the empathetic and sensitive Ui, emotions were teetering high on the precipice of bursting.

But when Azusa gave in and jumped, the rest followed—if not right there, mewling like a banshee as in Mio's case, then upon finding their seats in the corner with Nodoka. There, Ritsu and even Sawako, with all the commotion having ground to a halt and permitting reflection, permitted themselves a bout of frustrated sobs for this confusing, horrific reality.

It felt like centuries since then. Her left was depressingly vacant. It was hard not to imagine Yui's warmth, her lithe form glomped around Azusa's, gushing over the plain-looking girl's apparent cuteness.

To the right, Nodoka blew her nose, then inhaled deep within the tissue. But she lowered her hands rather than blow, exhaling a long, ragged sigh.

A reassurance that she was not responsible for this danced upon Azusa's tongue, but Nodoka at last ran out of self-pity to voice. Relatable, but Azusa doubted—hoped… prayed, really—that whatever Yui was going through was nobody's fault.

Though in all likelihood, it was everybody's. Those closest to her, that is.

A glance down the row displayed six hollow-eyed, ruddy-faced young ladies. Azusa, though Yui's current state rendered this debatable, fancied herself familiar enough with the others to read their minds:

'_How the hell did I miss any signs? Am I really that thick?' _said Ritsu's furrowed brow, deep in thought. So much so she was the only one not to properly dry her tears, lending her leftmost cheek a sticky sheen.

The periodic gasping sobs of Mio said a great, painful deal: aches for Yui, for her little sister and their parents. Terror for the future, that of their friendship and one of her only true friends. Images of the scene Nodoka had described over the phone, though perhaps everything else exceeded the comparatively natural act of physical science, leaving such thoughts far from the forefront.

Mugi sat hugging her knees, face buried within them, shoulders throbbing occasionally. '_This is new, and scary, and I don't like it. I don't know what to do, everything I have hasn't been good enough because you've been sad all this time.' _Mugi's subconscious insistence on this posture screamed of these notions, knowing how pure and childlike she was, for Sawako had lost all heart for social etiquette after the third time she eased Mugi's loafers off the chair and received a shuddering apology in response, only for Mugi to reset moments later.

Their sensei just looked exhausted, gazing into the ceiling as if God were there, giving her guidance. Her makeup had long-since been wiped away, yielding a youthful look into the real Sawako often hidden beneath the demeanor of an educator: one far, far too young to have so much responsibility and stress on her, as many young Japanese women could attest to.

Suddenly, it made a lot of sense why Sawako exhibited such childish outbursts, vied for her high school days, and lived a little more loosely through the strange friendship shared with her students. '_I can't believe I have to act like nothing's wrong in homeroom tomorrow with this in mind,' _was essentially screamed in her posture, her face. Her exhaustion.

Finally, with Nodoka between them sat Ui, soundlessly shedding tears. As one of two of her best friends, it ached Azusa to see her hold it in, because obviously she was, being the only girl still outwardly crying. The only one in the lobby to boot. But she deserved to process this in her own way—Azusa had zero right telling Ui how to conduct herself in this situation, with her thoughts whirling about her lifetime of knowing Yui, and her heart torn asunder.

Azusa wanted to sleep—would have had her aching heart slowed for at least five seconds.

The clacking of heels startled her from her thoughts. Azusa turned, sensing the rest shift behind her to the sight of that receptionist bearing a sad smile.

She stopped before Azusa, bent close, and whispered, "Your friend is awake and ready to receive visitors." The thudding of two feet behind Azusa implied Ritsu had shot up, because obviously it was her. "Shall I escort you?"

Azusa glanced down the row while Sawako stood, smoothing out her skirt as Ritsu came up, fists clenching anxiously. "Yes," she huffed, "please, do so. I'll stay behind, give the little ones time together."

"Of course." The woman in white nodded.

"I-I'll stay, too."

Azusa forgot herself, shot up like Ritsu. "Ui!" _Why?! This is Yui-senpai! _

A rueful smile. Hoarsely, Ui said, "It's because it's Onee-chan that I can't go right now."

Chills crept within Azusa, and not because Ui seemed to have read her mind. _What on Earth did those two talk about before seeing Nodoka-san? _

Said girl offered a gentler, less forced smile as she took Ui's hand without breaking eye contact. "I'll stay as well," said Nodoka. By instinct Azusa presumed she considered HTT to be closer to Yui now than her childhood friend, until she clarified after seeing Azusa's apprehension, "I was the last person she saw. I don't think I'll incite happy memories if I'm one of the first she sees again."

That was absurd. This is Yui she's talking about!

And then, "I hate to think this," Nodoka continued, her eyes lowering though not her smile, "that Yui would feel this way about me." A gulp. "But I don't know what to think now with her. It's… almost like I never knew her at all," she finished with a shrug. A pitiful chuckle, a hoarsening, "How petty, right? I should grow up and face—"

"No," Mio insisted, holding up a hand as Nodoka made to stand. "I understand where you're coming from, Nodoka. I do. Don't force yourself… We'll see Yui together. Gauge her ourselves. We'll take it from there, all of us here."

Mio never gave herself enough credit—even now, she was the calm, thoughtful leader Azusa knew her to be.

"Mugi!" Mio called, said girl startled up from her knee-pillow. "Let's go."

The blonde stammered, looking to each of them with glistening cheeks. "Ar-are we leaving?"

Ritsu, sharing a humored glance with Mio and Azusa, said, "Nah, we're gonna see our goofy friend. She's awake and waiting."

Mugi practically popped into a standing position. "Oh, how wonderful!"

* * *

The walk had been the longest, briefest, most painful stretch of time in Azusa's life.

The smalltalk with Yui even more so.

But when the hard question was finally asked, courageously by Ritsu, she answered with a smile so hapless, so unwitting and obviously, horribly fake that nobody could hide their appall after hearing it:

"Oh, I kinda felt bad cuz I sorta… broke... Ui," she finished soft, her smile almost waning. "A-and Nodoka-chan... But I'm good now! Got it outta my system—now I'mma hundred percent, you don't gotta worry about me!"

Depression allegations aside, it was impossible to believe her with both legs in casts, and tears in her eyes.

It could have been the light, though.

* * *

**You ask and I provide. Thanks everyone for reviewing, hope to hear all of your thoughts for this one! **


	3. Ritsu

"_I mess with somebody, but truthfully I want it to be the other way around,_

_I can't say something like, 'I don't wanna be alone, absolutely not!'_

_However, could it be that the degree of my jokes is hurting you? _

_Sorry! Give me a blow with your first." _

"_Sketchiness and loneliness; if you analyze these components, there's more of the latter,_

_But fortunately tears are a bit too small, _

_I can't control them… What to do?!" _

—_Mezase Happy 100%, _Ritsu's character song

**Ritsu**

Mio and Mugi had been crying practically nonstop since Nodoka called.

Azusa, on the other hand, said nothing.

An idiot part of Ritsu thought their junior didn't care; maybe she did, maybe she didn't. Maybe the tears quietly shed between now and sprinting through the lobby were just an act. Maybe she cared as much as she did about their graduation—that is to say, only out of courtesy.

Maybe Ritsu's chest burned thinking this because it was out of fear, anger: fear of Yui having lied to them for years, anger towards Yui having hidden her pain for years.

For three freaking years. And Ritsu didn't notice a single damn _freaking THING._

...Maybe everybody had it wrong. Like, Yui just had a little tantrum at the idea of graduating and leaving Nodoka. That's more in-character for her than whatever horribleness those goofballs Mio and Mugi thought up.

Or maybe that idiot part of Ritsu had it totally backwards. Maybe Occam's razor dictated blatant evidence to be truth: Yui had depression, Azusa didn't care, and Ritsu's idiot brain was doing everything it could to find an excuse not to start crying.

Everybody else already was.

It was the idiot part of Ritsu she couldn't dare trust right now. Reading the room had always been much harder than reading English, though. Listening to that idiot part risked misreading the complicated language she understood less than the one she saw zero point in learning.

Schools ought to change that, right?

American schools apparently taught such things. "Psychology." Or was it "sociology?" Mio tried explaining once.

Keyword there being "tried."

Rounding the corner, navigating the hospital bowels and those of her own thoughts was all Ritsu could do to hold it together. Dwelling on anything else meant dwelling on Yui, and dwelling on Yui meant realizing she was all but literally dead. Maybe. Definitely, not even close, who knows?

Everybody's silence meant they were all in the same boat. The same sad little boat. They were all going to drown together depending on what met them in room #204.

A little too soon they found Yui Hirasawsa, suspended from the ceiling by thick-casted legs. She was blowing raspberries to the intro of 'Fuwa Fuwa Time.'

Ritsu let out a breath. _She's okay, _was her immediate thought. _She doesn't look sad at all. _

Brown eyes lit up, big and warming upon them. "Ah, welcome, friends!"

Everybody else, surely too paranoid to believe her attitude, stayed back and quiet as Ritsu strut in, hands behind her back. "Lieutenant Hirasawa," she grunted, "the force is happy to see you've not lost your sparkle." She saluted.

Yui copied her, speaking gruffly, "Ah, yes, Captain Ricchan. My apologies for making you all worry."

This was good. Very good. She was fine, she was happy. "Fret not, old friend. How are you feeling?"

"Oh, good, great. I'm gonna have to graduate in a wheelchair, but on the other hand I got two casts for the boys back home to sign. I'll definitely look cute when I graduate from the Academy."

She was happy for sure. "I see that," Ritsu continued in her commanding tone. "Your legs are looking mighty blubbery, soldier. We'll have to ship you back to training camp when possible."

"Heh, nooo! Oh-noooes!"

Mio punched the smile off Ritsu's face, even though it thumped her on the spine—far different from the chiding wallops on the noggin, different in what they usually said. '_Stop playing around. Please,' _this one said. '_Please,' _it begged in the way her fingers squeezed Ritsu's coattails.

Her downcast face was clear as day, even out of sight.

_Oi, Mio, why can't you do it if you're so worried? _The words danced on Ritsu's tongue, but forcing Mio through that was worse than feeling that pain herself.

Drinking in Yui again, clearer of head, forced Ritsu to recognize her own idiot brain had briefly taken over: how the light in Yui's eye was dull, how forced her responses were. Fears buried before coming face to face with reality burst outward, flooding Ritsu's chest so bad she couldn't breathe.

Whoever was right here about Yui, Ritsu would never know if she didn't acknowledge that reality aloud. And if she didn't now, then no one ever would, and it would be too late to do something to help Yui.

That, at least, Ritsu suddenly recalled from Mio's attempt to explain American psycho-sociology. She alone had to use it to help Yui. No one else would, they couldn't, they were far too fragile. Ritsu had to do it.

Only she could do it.

She had to.

_Had to._

_Or else Yui might try to kill herself again. _

This alone terrified Ritsu, welled a distinct pressure against her eyeballs.

More than the possibility of everyone being right, of Ritsu having been an idiot this whole time, and the previously thought slim chance of her cheerful friend having been in pain all these years and lying to them for as long as she'd known them.

More than all of that, this single idea—even if totally irrational and influenced by Mio and everybody else's overactive imaginations—terrified her.

"Ah, Yui?"

"Huh?"

"So… yeah." Meeting her eyes, Ritsu felt a gut-punch seeing Yui now gazing at the wall, happiness painted on her face. She must have sensed the shift in atmosphere, too. "So, um, uh…"

How the hell did anybody approach this stuff?

"So, Nodoka," Ritsu began, the casts far easier to handle than whatever face Yui would make hearing that name, "she told us that you were pretty upset before the accident. Somethin' about apologizing for old junk and stuff? Heh, what, uh, what brought that on, you know?"

The heart monitor beeped steadily, quickly—she'd been hooked up that and Ritsu didn't realize.

Her arms were bandaged all over and Ritsu didn't realize.

She was smiling with eyes glistening like they never have before. Not since that time she was late for the school festival last winter. And Ritsu didn't realize.

Ritsu didn't realize her friend was just like her.

She'd been best friends with Yui for almost three years now and she never once entertained the idea that she was just like Ritsu—laughing and crying at the same damn time.

"Oh!" Yui squeaked. "I kinda felt bad cuz I sorta… broke… Ui." The name was uttered like a whisper, like she'd followed them and was lurking outside the door. Why? Was Ui mad? Did they have a fight for once? "A-And Nodoka-chan… But I'm good now! Got it outta my system—now I'mma hundred percent, you don't gotta worry about me!"

Ouch. Oof. That was so fake it hurt. Ritsu willed her hands to stay at her sides, and her idiot brain to spit out a followup:

_No you're not. You're not okay. _But Yui might go on the defensive if she's attacked like that.

_What makes you think that? _Yui would lie again.

_What'd you guys talk about? _And what right did Ritsu have trying to know something like that? Did it matter at this point? Would Yui care? Would she lie again?

_Why am I suddenly getting cold feet? Now, here?! _

"Yui-chan," Mugi stepped forward, hands clasped, gentle as an angel, "we don't know what you discussed with Ui to make you so sad, but… but _ph'lease—!_" A gasping-sob into praying hands; her hitched shoulders relaxed under Mio's sudden comfort. "Please," Mugi croaked, "don't think for a minute you've hurt Ui-chan. Please, don't. She's only broken now because you're in here, worried sick."

The heart monitor beep-beep-beeped.

Yui's face, blank, twisted suddenly, wrenching with pain. A gasp tore out, her lips shuddering, muttering something.

Mugi stepped closer, reaching out. "Yui-cha—?"

And Yui Hirasawa _screamed—_no, _wailed_—into her hands: "_I'm s'ho! SOR-RY!" _

Mugi moved faster than Ritsu could absorb the sight before her, wrapping herself around Yui's heaving shoulders. "It's okay, Yui!" Mugi wheezed, abandoning the honorific to rattle off whatever she could think of to calm her: "It's okay, it's okay, you're okay, you don't need to be sad, please don't be sad, please, please, please-please-_please-ph'lease—!_" Yui's cries jumped in volume suddenly, startling everybody.

"Mugi-senpai, stop!" Azusa forgot her stuffy manners for once, grabbing Mugi by the fabric at her elbow. "You're making it worse, Mugi-sen—"

"No!" She tightened her embrace, gasping into Yui's hair. Pale hands moved, entangling themselves in her friend's messier-than-normal hair. "Yui," she breathed, followed by a damp pecking noise. "Yui." Mugi kissed the top of her head again. "Yui, we love you, Yui. We love you." She pecked her again and again, like a mother trying to kiss away a booboo.

_Why can't I move? _This wasn't real. _This is some bad nightmare. _This couldn't be real, it wasn't. It couldn't be, it wasn't.

Yui was completely, absolutely broken: happy, goofy, lazy, childlike Yui having been reduced to this.

This was all Ui's fault. Yui was perfectly fine before she had talked to Ui… and Ritsu was awful for thinking that, for feeling angry and assuming this to be fact.

It wasn't long—about twenty seconds after Yui burst out—before the nurses came.

Ritsu laid in bed that night, ever useless, still silent. She only vaguely remembered the band talking to the others in the lobby, and the car ride home.

Mugi's sniffling, her jumping between cries and snivelling, were crystal clear.

Even clearer was the fabric of Ui's collar in Ritsu's hand, the hitch of her voice as she answered Ritsu's snarled question: '_I… I only told her I'd miss her when she goes to college. That's it, that's all.' _

* * *

Ritsu didn't go to the hospital the next day.

Having only gone the past several days to hang in the clubroom, she didn't go to school either.

Mio had blown up her phone. The only text read was the final that popped up on her phone screen, in the middle of the night with Yui's cries keeping her awake:

'_Yui needs us now more than ever. Don't be selfish.' _

How fucking dare she. _'Meet me in the clubroom tomorrow and say that to my face,' _Ritsu texted.


	4. Mio

_Songwriting… I love thinking up lyrics. Because I know nobody but me will fully understand them: what's between the lines, the emotions projected. Through those bars and scratched out papers lay the one solace where I may breathe easy, knowing that I've screamed my feelings to the world, and that nobody will fully comprehend and judge me for it. _

_I've... never been good with words. _

_The thought of saying the wrong thing, or the stupid thing, it terrifies me to no end. _

_Terrifies me. _

_But not nearly as much as losing the special place in my heart—the place that made life and all its terrifying complications a little… less. Simply less. _

_This time, though, songwriting isn't going to save me, nor will… Yui. It won't save Yui, I mean. Vague platitudes hidden in lyrics won't bring that back that sparkle in her eyes. Words will. Words that will terrify me and make me want to run, but still my feet for the sake of Yui. _

_Yes. Her sake is what will save her. Because today, all of us—Azusa and Ritsu especially—are fighting through our personal terrors for Yui Hirasawa's sake. _

_We'll save you, Yui. _

"Azusa-chan?"

_Mugi will save you. Azusa will save you. Ritsu, Nodoka, Ui, they'll all save you. _

"Azusa~"

_And I'll do my best—more than my best—to save you, too. _

"Azusa-chan!"

**Mio**

"Azusa-chan? Azusa~" Mugi puffed her cheeks. "Azusa-chan!"

"Oh." Their kouhai blinked, surprise lifting her from her hand-cradle. "Mugi-senpai, gomen nasai."

Bending over her shoulder, teapot in hand, Mugi smiled kindly. "Rehearsing last night's thoughts for Ritsu?" she asked, topping Azusa's cat-printed cup.

Azusa sank in her seat, her eyes filling. Not with tears, but emotion for sure. "N-no, no, it was a dumb idea." So she _was _thinking about it—and doubting herself. Mio felt her struggle. "It was arrogant to even suggest that I understood what Yui-s-s-senpai was going through." She finished softly, trying to hide the break in her voice, "Please forget it. We'll see her today, of course, and do our best to make her feel comfortable like yesterday, but…" A shake of the head, her twintails shuddering. "Asserting an issue she promises isn't there will drive her into a corner. She was joking and being herself yesterday, we should keep that going rather than insisting ourselves upon her."

Frowning, Mugi stiffened in a snap, teapot sloshing as she hugged it to her chest.

The sight of Mugi crying out in pain flashed forth, filling Mio's lungs. "Mugi-chan, careful!" she gasped. "That's hot!" The words tore out of her, even breathing pained her breast: more tears, more friends hurt and crying because Mio stood passively by.

But Mugi wouldn't budge, akin to a child hogging their toy. "No more scorching than Azusa's take, Mio-chan." That might not have made the most sense, but Mugi gingerly dragged Azusa's teacup away from her. "No chamomile for quitters."

"But Mugi-senpai—!"

"We'll decide with Ricchan, as a team," Mugi concluded, pushing the teacup back to Azusa.

"Don't forget Nodoka." Silence. The squeezing of Mio's own two hands was deafening. "She's as much a part of this as we." Ui, too, but she was bound to agree if it meant helping her sister.

"Y-yeah." From Mio's peripherals, Azusa's little hands clenched together, knuckles white, her breaths shallow. "Okay."

The lack of further argument proved Azusa was voicing doubts more out of worry than genuine conviction. It was just a theory she'd shared on the car ride home last night, but a sound one taken in her perspective. Oh, indeed, Azusa denied her stance on the matter immediately, all red in the face, but it was obvious who she was speaking of: the "fr-friend" who empathized with Yui's falseness. For it couldn't have been the rambunctious Jun or Ui, and it definitely wasn't anybody in the light music club.

And Azusa, sadly, didn't have any other friends. _And just now, _Mio realized, _she tried dismissing her perspective from a perceived place of unimportance: the "underclassman," the kouhai who'd no right sharing personal issues with her senpais, because by Japanese social norms we—her elders—naturally have more important things to do than give a hoot about our friend's "selfish, childish" anxieties. _It was always a load, in Mio's personal opinion. Now more than ever she was envious of Yui's fearlessness in tearing down such norms—but what if Azusa thought low of Mio if she acted so out-of-character, or that it made her more uncomfortable considering her insistence on such things?

Mio once again glanced at the clock. Mugi read between the lines: "She'll come. Ricchan's no slouch when it comes to you, or a challenge." She huffed, smiling. "It's the perfect double-whammy bait."

"I know." But still.

Bracing oneself in perpetuity was exhausting. Mio would know—a balloon within her chest cavity, overstuffed and waiting to be popped—_that's _anxiety. Ironically, it was the very instant she heard that boyish shrill of, "How dare you, Mio-chan?!" punctuate the crashing of a door, that the tension finally, at last, burst violently. But briefly.

Calm returned, the rush of a flowing river circulating through Mio's veins. _That's right, _said the still-somewhat-crushing stillness in her breast, _it's just Ritsu. Despite the situation, she's still the same old Ritsu. _

But then Mio looked diagonally from her, to the empty seat. _**ThAt'S wHaT yOu ThOuGhT aBoUt YuI, iDiOt**_—a wordless sentiment laced with venom.

_This has gotten worse than it needed to be because I reacted poorly to Yui's accident: this is all my fault. I won't dare make this about myself, but I won't be so irresponsible as to deny the facts either. _

Her body didn't agree, however: wet warmth tickled Mio's cheeks, too fast for her to scratch away.

"Mio-senpai, are you okay?!" Azusa's chair squealed away, her tiny hands trying to gouge the table.

She was taking this harder than any of them—and _that _was saying something.

Mio's lips curled as best as she could manage. "It's okay, Azusa." _I'm just a dummy. _"I was thinking about Yui, is all." A warmth on her shoulder settled, attached to Mugi and her concerned smile.

"H-hai, gomen." Azusa dropped like a stone, scooted forth. And avoided eye-contact. "You don't have to explain. Sumimasen—for overreacting." She clasped her hands together, so small, so tightly, that Mio almost failed to see them shaking. "Gomen nasai."

Mio couldn't stand watching her suffer. Nor like Yui apparently did. "You're anxious." _About a lot. About things beyond the now, for sure. _"Daijobu."

"Oi, Mio!"

"You don't have to apologize, Azusa-chan," said Mugi.

"Suggoku gomen ne!" Azusa flinched. "F-for being sorry, I mean," she whispered.

Mugi huffed, a noise as forced as the smile on her face. "That's still apologizing, sweetie," she added softly. Azusa sunk within her shoulders, blush creeping to her ears.

For absolutely no reason.

No reason at all.

Just like Yui shouldn't be so remorseful with her friends, Azusa had no reason to feel as though her feelings were so unimportant—even before Yui's accident, but especially now.

But something other than pessimism held Mio's tongue: selfishness.

"MIO!"

How in-characteristically selfish, this urge to comfort their kouhai and continue ignoring her idiot of a best friend—a selfish urge which drove another spike through Mio's heart. _**tHiS uRgE iS, uNdeNiAbLy, PaRt Of WhY yUi FeELs As ThOuGh YoU nEvEr CaReD, **_it said. _**YoU oNlY cArEd AbOuT yOuR oWn CoMfOrT. YoU'Re A bAd FrIeNd, SeLfIsH, sCaReD mIo—**_

"Akiyama Mio! Oi, Mio!" Ritsu was closer, her irritation snapping hollowly against the emptiness of the club room. "Finally, your ears're open." Must have caught Mio flinch, finally, at her racket. "What's this bullcrap you're texting me about being selfish, huh? You think I don't care about Yui? That's a load and you _know _it!"

Oh, she did. She knew how much Ritsu cared about Yui—and that no one else ever would. Until today.

But that was a bonus.

Something sparked within, hot and roaring. Roaring suddenly, an inferno within!

Ah.

_Yes_.

This was the emotion Mio had stuffed way, way down approximately twenty-four hours ago. An easy task, surprisingly, for a part of Mio could tell early on when Ritsu had skipped school and refused to even open her phone—all those messages being marked unread.

This pattern of behavior, while new, was familiar in other ways. Sawako drove them to the hospital under the false pretense that Ritsu was scared and hurting.

And she most definitely was.

But she was also being incredibly boneheaded and unbelievably selfish, too, and was hiding from that reality instead of staring it in the faux-cheeriness of Yui Hirasawa.

"_**MI-OH-CHAN!" **_all of existence screamed, directly in her ear.

Mio saw red, her fist clenching, a blur—and then Ritsu sprawled on the ground, cradling the softball-sized welt growing from her hair. "How dare you," she groaned, "Mio-chan…?"

"How dare I? _How dare I?_ How dare _you?!_" Mio's voice rang sharp. Azusa and Mugi were panting in the far, far distance.

Wincing, Ritsu propped herself up. "How dare I _what?_" Mio lurched, and Ritsu flinched away with a cry, a genuine sound of fear.

"How dare you—?" The hand ready to whack her again sprung open, shaking. "How _dare you_ hide from Yui? In her hour of need, at that?!" Guilt tore across her face, a pain latching itself around Ritsu's heart so tight it strangled Mio's in two. "Baka-Ritsu," she sighed.

"C-come on, guys—" Azusa tried.

"I have so _not!_" Ritsu cried. "I'm _not _hiding from Yui! I'd never run away if she or any o' you needed my help!"

Surprisingly clever wording—meaning she had thought it over all day and night, justifying herself. "I know you as one to quit when the going gets tough," countered Mio.

"I didn't 'quit,' what the hell am I even 'quitting' here?" Ritsu sniffed, wiping her nose with a swipe of the thumb. "_You_ know me so well, apparently. It should be pretty friggin' obvious, ya bully."

"Wh-who wants some tea?" Mugi cried cheerfully. "Ow-ouch! Oh!"

"Mugi-senpai!" She'd forgotten to hold the pot with a cloth. Azusa would handle it.

_Sorry you always have to parent your immature senpais, Azusa-chan—_a quiet thought, far in the distance of Mio's furious palpitations, those of heart and mind. So far not even a twinge of guilt manifested, because Mio was and always has been so self-centered.

"Ritsu," she said, "I know exactly how you're feeling right now. I do. But you can't just decide that, until she decides to be happy again, you can simply put your friendship on hold—"

"If you seriously think that that's me _abandoning _Yui, then save it," Ritsu snapped.

A bestial sound rumbled, and suddenly she was low to the ground, Ritsu's fear filling her vision and her collar Mio's hands. "Then why didn't you come to the hospital? _Why _didn't you answer your phone yesterday?"

"Mio—"

"_Why_, in this time of _all times,_ are you deciding to play the victim when one of your best fucking friends wants to fucking _kill herself?!_"

The silence pulsated. A beat later, Mio's heavy heart swelled once more. _That was ugly, an ugly thing I just said..._

"M-Mio-senpai—"

"As if that's a fact! The doctor was just asking Ui questions, we shouldn't even know about this!" Ritsu effortlessly shattered that guilt from the inside.

"Look at the evidence!" Mio roared, jostling her by the collar.

"Step out of your stupid scared brain for once!"

"_NO!_ Lose the tough-guy-act and be honest with yourself for once in your life!"

"Oh, so you just want me to confess, huh?"

"Yes!"

"You wanna drag me to your level?!"

"_Spit it out, darn you!" _

Tears burst from Ritsu's eyes. "Then what's the friggin' point in my being there, Mio?!" Ritsu grunted a sob as her head fell back, thunking against the hardwood.

She was suddenly so far.

But not far enough with the table keeping Mio painfully close.

This was what she wanted, what she had known all along. It was now out in the open, and Ritsu was crying. Mio wanted this, she made it happen.

And she was all the more selfish for it. "Rits—_urk!_" Mio coughed, her throat closing. "Ritsu," she gasped, "you're her friend. That's the point of being there, regardless of whether or not you can do something to help her."

"As if!" Ritsu lied there, arms crossing her ruddy, runny face. "It's not like I can say anything that'll make her happy, or make 'er comfortable enough to actually talk to us about it."

Always a child, deep down. Mio couldn't believe they were all eighteen—adults in a way.

"Didja even hear the way she was sobbin' the other day, Mio?"

"Ritsu—"

"She was screamin' her head off like she never had before. Not even Mugi-chan could stop it! What the hell'm I supposed to say or do, Mio? What… can I _do…_" A sniffle. "What can my stupid brain do to make my friend happy again?"

And then Ritsu Tainaka, hands cupped around her face, let loose a wail. A gasp. And another, longer crescendo of a cry.

Finally, after two days since the accident, Ritsu allowed the pain of the situation to catch up to her in full.

It hurt to watch. Azusa and Mugi moved to comfort her, but Mio impeded them with an outstretched arm.

For the last thing Ritsu needed was more guilt if she lashed out in embarrassment and self-pity.

It must have been a sight: the three of them standing over Ritsu, watching her bawl like a baby.

* * *

Centuries later she finally stopped, and the first thing Ritsu did was not pick herself up off the floor.

She spun into a kneeling position, touched her forehead to the floor. "Suggoku… gomen ne," said a soft, gravelly voice that couldn't possibly have been Ritsu's.

Mio crossed her arms, unable to suppress her relief enough to hide a smirk. "It's not us you should be apologizing to. Though I forgive you for acting like an impudent child. As always."

"Nor do I." Mugi knelt by Ritsu's side, rubbing big, slow circles into her back. "If it makes you feel better, I thrashed and screamed all about my bedroom that first night."

Ritsu peeked from her prostration, red-faced and puffy. "I find that hard to believe, literally."

"I don't." Azusa lowered herself beside Ritsu, a weary smile in place. "Mugi-senpai is definitely the type to throw a tantrum."

"It's how I was able to come here and meet all of you," Mugi chuckled. Her smile didn't quite meet her eyes until then. Even so her gaze remained distant, clouded with pain—as she had since getting that phone call from Nodoka.

Azusa and Ritsu huffed, humored, but fell back once they met one another's eyes. "Sorry you had to see your senpai like this, little cat," she said, cheek laid against her hands.

A shake of the head, waving her off. "Ritsu-senpai, I have a high opinion of every one of you. But maturity and proper behavior is definitely not a part of it."

"Urk!" Ritsu hid herself, prostrating properly again. Maybe by accident.

"Besides..." Azusa gazed aside, hands fidgeting in her lap like they wanted to join Mugi's in comforting, "besides, I'd be more worried if you _didn't _act this way."

"Eh?" If she weren't so flushed and moist in the face, Ritsu would have looked normal.

Azusa met her eyes, smiled sweetly. "Part of why I love the light music club, why I wanted to join, was so I could be part of a genuine band."

"I don't follow."

"Azusa-chan wanted to be part of the bond we so boldly toted onstage, Ricchan," Mugi explained.

"N-not really! I mean, th-that's not the only reason, Mugi-senpai! I wanted to play, too!"

"Looks like you hit the nail on the head, Mugi-chan."

"I have a knack for it," she tittered.

"Jeez!" Azusa crossed her arms, puffing her crimson cheeks. "Why do I even try?"

"Because you _lurve _us?" Ritsu batted her eyes.

"Sh-shut up!"

Laughter burst from Ritsu's lips; Mugi followed, attempting to smother it in a fist. Looking to each of them, Azusa clearly tried and failed to suppress her own.

Mio watched this display, watched two of her best friends masterfully comfort her oldest. It almost seemed like normal.

Almost—it was too quiet, despite their racket.

Normalcy will never come again if they didn't act today.

* * *

**A/N: **A short chapter today, but the final - Yui - will come within the next few days. I'm sorry this took so long: I wanted to continue this, but COVID drama aside I felt afraid. Like Mio, honestly—I was afraid I would let everyone down with how this would conclude. It's not that I think it would be bad, but the subject matter and execution is so important to a lot of people.

I won't go off on a tangent, not until the end of the last chapter. But the groundwork laid here: Mio's guilt, Ritsu's behavior, Azusa's anxiety—all of it will play a part and be explored in the final chapter. It'll be a long one, not dragged out but appropriate for the chapters and character drama that led up to this one.

Please, just don't forget that this story isn't just about Yui's feelings, but the bond of HTT. That was the very first part of the very first chapter, after all, as is the title of the story! I hope, with that in mind, what I have in store is satisfactory and moving.


	5. Yui pt 1 - Yelling Because I Love You

A dry erase marker capped shut, whipping the emptiness of the club room. Ritsu stepped aside, gripping it in both hands as though its ink comprised this weighty calm.

'Operation: Saving Private Yui,' said the club's trusty whiteboard.

"Alright. Here's what we _do _know." On her tiptoes, Ritsu pointed to the first line. "Three days ago, Ui had asked Yui-chan for company on the walk home." The second line: "According to Azusa, the point was to tell Yui that her sister would miss her when she goes to college. That's only the extent of what Ui herself has admitted, though."

Ah. That explained the second line ending in a question mark.

"Third. In reaction to this, Yui was, for whatever reason, really bummed out. It brought her to you, Nodoka-san, made her apologize for a bunch of stuff, and then leave in a hurry before you could even get a word in."

"Fourth: boom! Car accident. Yui busted her legs and was hospitalized. We tried making smalltalk before asking what had happened, whereupon her mask broke and she burst into tears, apologizing up and down."

"Fifth and final: Mio-chan, Azusa-chan, Nodoka-san and Mugi-chan visited Yui in the hospital yesterday and made normal conversation with her, avoiding all mention of her feelings or the accident. Yui was clearly forcing her usual shtick, from what I'm told, but she apologized for random things like 'making' everyone come see her, worrying them, and for 'screwing up big time.' What's particularly concerning about this is that, usually, it takes Yui irrefutable proof to realize she'd done something worth apologizing over, and even then she tries justifying it like a little kid."

"And that's all. I'll be honest, the thought of what's coming next is like looking into a black hole: a big unknown sucking out all my guts and junk. I'm… scared. That's right! The light music club's bouchou is scared pantsless! And frankly, why shouldn't I be? This is one of my friends, and I got no idea what's up with her or if I—not to mention everyone else—can do anything to help if this is as serious as we think. But that's no excuse to run… I just wish I was this mature a week ago."

"BUT! Feeling bad about myself isn't the answer to helping Yui-chan! _So_, are there any questions before we go and see her?"

Nodoka looked about the empty club room, as if the dust bunnies and empty chairs had a say, before raising her hand.

"Yes! You, in the glasses!"

A sheepish smile. "Gomen. I have loose ends to tie up with the student council before graduation next week."

Still, statuesque. Then, Ritsu erupted with a cry, slamming the marker onto the hardwood, her knees hitting it just promptly as fingers clawed through her hair. "Why didn't you say anything when I started writing all of that?!"

"Well, why didn't you? I knew this was about Yui, but not that you presumed I'd be joining you today." Nodoka lowered her face, her smile melting. "I wish I could. I do," she murmured. "But I'm confident Yui would be fine without me, this time."

Ritsu's hands slumped to her sides. "You're Yui's oldest friend," she pointed out. "Don't you care?"

"Hai." Nodoka rasped, face dropping from view. "So damn much. So much my heart's been aching nonstop since she'd burst into tears right before my eyes." Nodoka strangled the front of her jacket. Ritsu's lips parted… something was on the tip of her tongue, it had to be in this situation.

It had to be.

This was like a trial run for Yui.

So there had to be something—anything—useful.

Nodoka's hands moved soundlessly, whipping off her glasses and running a wrist across her eyes.

"N-Nodoka-san…" Nothing came. Not a damn, stupid thing.

Class Prez shot up to her feet, hugging the papers she had been carrying prior to being intercepted. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glossy.

Her smile forced.

"I _am _Yui's oldest friend," said Nodoka. "For almost all our lives, I was her only friend. You know," she laughed bitterly, "in grade school, there was a time where I couldn't stand her? A brief time, but it was when I first started taking my studies very seriously. Yui angered me, though. You know how needy she can be when it comes to learning, and how apparently useless she is otherwise."

Ritsu did. But even a dog would know that. So she instead guessed, "That Yui's some kinda selective genius when she's learning something knew—that her brain can only process and store one concept at a time?"

Nodoka's head sank into her papers, shoulders bouncing. Ritsu feared, for some reason, that Prez had begun to cry.

She threw her face up, laughing. "You _are _her friend," said Nodoka. "Yes, exactly. But that's not the only thing I came to realize one fateful day."

"I sense a profound friendship moment incoming."

"Not really. Yui would see it that way, though perhaps it's so in my own head rather than her's." Nodoka looked to the ceiling, her eyes glossy with the present, bright with the past: "I helped Yui study for a test in second grade, more out of obligation for our childhoods together than anything so deep. It… was hard, simply put. And I was just about at the end of my rope, on the cusp of really tearing into her when I asked if we could stop for the day. If she persisted as she's wont to do, all moaning and crying, I very well might have."

"This is _really _sounding like the setup for a turning point in your friendship." Ritsu couldn't help but feel jealous—the closest she ever had to such a thing were their last two cultural festivals, tears involved both times, herself and just one other neither.

"Like I said," Nodoka continued, softly, "I doubt Yui holds this memory as dear to her as I do. You see, Yui up until this point had been trying very hard to understand the material. A lot of it just escaped her, though, no matter how I tried explaining it. I was on the verge of quitting on her and our affiliation, because more than anything at the time, all I wanted was to be at the top of the class. But I couldn't do that if half my study time was spent teaching this hapless fool from my girlhood the basics."

Memory Lane was nice this time of year, but Ritsu had a mission waiting for her. "I'm sensing a big fat 'but' is on its way. Just get your 'but' in here already."

Nodoka smiled thinly. "'But,'" she enunciated, "Yui, when I asked her if we could stop, Yui just said, 'Yeah, yeah,' waving me off without her pen slowing down." Her brows knitted. "I was surprised, but not so much that it shattered my view of her. You have to remember, Yui was always a machine once she got into the zone of something."

"True, true."

"So I said to Yui, 'I'm going home now.' I wanted to say something mean, because I still wanted to stop tutoring her, but when it came time to say it I just… froze. Like always. 'If you need help, wait until tomorrow,' I told her instead." Nodoka spoke a little faster: "'Nah, I think I got this,' Yui'd said. And then she asked, 'After our test tomorrow, let me buy you a week's ice cream!' And I, confused and taken aback, said, "'You're going to buy me ice cream for a week? Why, with what money?' Finally, Yui put her pen down, looked at me with these bleary, knowledge-soaked eyes, and said, "'No, Nodoka-chan, I'm going to buy you a week's worth of ice cream tomorrow, because that's how long you've helped me for this test!' And—can you believe this—and she actually said I'm _nice _for helping her, even though I wanted to be top of the class. Not knowing that I wasn't helping her despite my wish, but because it was the polite thing to do instead."

"Oof." Ritsu winced. "Yeah, even nowadays Yui has this way of bending you with her blatant kindness."

"It was so much worse, though," Nodoka whispered to her papers. "I could sleep or study when I got home. I felt like the biggest fake in the world. By then I didn't care about being the top, I didn't deserve it, and yet—!" Nodoka gasped soft, her eyes flashing wetly, widely, to Ritsu's.

She had never seen Prez like this. Like seeing Yui wail into Mugi's shoulder again: just wrong, so wrong she wanted to run.

"And yet," Nodoka continued, blinking the glaze from her eyes, "I made it anyway. Despite my lack of study the night prior, despite my helping Yui, _despite… _despite spending my free time finding grievances and annoyances with her rather than mulling over the test itself…" Ritsu was suddenly reminded of a similar falling out she had with Mio back in grade school, "...I passed. I did it, I got to the top of the class, and for punishment, Yui gave me the coveted banana from her sundae."

And everyone close to Yui knew how much she treasured the crowns of her favorite desserts.

"I couldn't take it anymore," murmured Nodoka, "the guilt, the value I had in myself pitted against the utter lack of it for Yui before we studied the night before, all of it crushed by my new perspective for Yui. Hirasawa Yui, who was number three in the class despite my help. Who, despite my help I didn't really need to give, I was ready to write off as being in the bottom three if she were lucky."

"Harsh. I mean, I get it, I was in the same boat our freshman year, but…" But Yui had managed to get into Mugi's difficult university with nothing but gusto and her special study powers.

"I was trash," said Nodoka. "On every level, I was the scum of the Earth that looked down on girls like Yui as hopeless wastes of society." A swallow. "I broke down, obviously, and Yui comforted me… Obviously. Obviously not knowing a thing that was going on inside, obviously making wrong, silly guesses as to what made me cry. I blamed it on a tummy ache from too much ice cream, and Yui… apologized. She apologized for messing up again, and for making me spend so much time trying to help her."

"And I did as well: I apologized in between cries, trying to explain but it just came out a mess that made me feel worse, and by proxy, more unintelligible. Yui hugged me, though, these two crying grade schoolers in the middle of an ice cream shop. The owner must have been uncomfortable. I was, too, thinking I made him and Yui feel that way. But Yui, as always, didn't care. She said in her, at the time, painfully slow and struggling speech pattern, 'How can I make you feel better, Nodoka-chan?' And I… begged her, really: 'Don't ever stop being my friend.'"

Nodoka pinched the bridge of her nose, wiping her eyes in between.

Ritsu swallowed a lump that had formed in her throat. "She say anything to that?"

A wry chuckle. "Exactly what you'd expect: 'thank goodness,' she said, slumping back in her seat, 'that's so easy.'" Nodoka replaced her glasses. "Forever after, I never judged or looked down on anyone again. Everybody has their strengths and weaknesses, and it was Yui who made me the person I am today, as far as that front is concerned."

That explained a lot that Ritsu never realized needed explaining. "Huh. It's no wonder you're not at all a tightass."

"P-pardon?"

"All the leeway you've given our club, and your unnaturally high tolerance for b.s." Ritsu shrugged. "Yui wouldn't be here without you, but neither would you without her."

"Hai," Nodoka said hoarsely. She looked to the hardwood. "And Yui might not be here, period, without the four of you."

Her soft tone was gutting, like Mio's when a prank went too far. "Y-you mean she'd, like, not comin' to school—?"

"I mean she might have killed herself." Her gaze lifted, boring right through Ritsu. "That's a horrible thought, isn't it? My head's been full of them since the accident."

"Th-that's okay, Nodoka-sa—"

"Just all of these horrible, selfish thoughts: like Yui, how dare she be more complex than I always thought? How dare she not come to me, her oldest friend, for help when she so clearly needed it? How dare she make me look down on her once again, for our entire lives, without me ever realizing it until she tried to kill herself?"

"_She didn't try to kill herself!"_ The force of Nodoka's flinch sent Ritsu's back into the whiteboard. "I-I mean," she said, palming her forehead, "we don't know that for sure. So… so don't beat yourself up about it." Same goes for Azusa, Mio, Mugi, and of course Ritsu herself.

"And that's why I don't want to go." Nodoka's hair fell before her eyes. "Not just because of student council work, though it's a genuine godsend I could use that as an excuse, but because…" She must have had a hundred papers cradled in her arms; a thick 'crumple' snapped from within her tightening embrace. "Because if I joined you today, and heard what you're about to hear, I may very well grill Yui on such things in a thoughtless surge of emotion. And I don't want that, or, at the very least, I don't want to embarrass her nor myself in front of friends. So… I'll refrain until her and I can find time alone."

Ritsu only heard the last part, her curious brain latching onto 'what you're about to hear.'

"Nodoka-san," she said, "do you know something that I don't?" The marker tapped against the whiteboard, all that the Light Music Club knew about the situation and its relation to Yui's character.

But Nodoka shook her head. "Nothing helpful, otherwise this might have been resolved the day of. No, all I have with me is over a decade of friendship with Hirasawa Yui. And in that decade, if there's one thing here and now I want to stress, it's that nothing—and I mean nothing—is more important to Yui than her own happiness."

Ritsu blinked; nobody would expect such an earnest criticism from Nodoka, let alone in this situation.

"I can see it in your face," she said fondly. "But you must have noticed it by now: Yui can be selfish. Lucky for all of us, friends make her happy more so than being a lazy couch potato."

"Lucky for her, you mean. I wouldn't waste a second on Yui if she wasn't serious about playing in the band." Ritsu, realizing what she'd said, couldn't stand Nodoka's puzzled head tilt.

It was meant to be a bit of snark to lighten the mood, but that was just her defense mechanism against a heavy, serious atmosphere.

Came off as real mean.

"Yui's grown up since starting high school, a lot. And it's because of the four of you." Nodoka huffed, smiling all angelically. "I'll admit, despite my relief knowing she's in good hands, I can't help but feel a little envious. Perhaps even forlorn."

"Eh?"

"Alone," Nodoka whispered. Her collected smile returned before Ritsu could react: "Look at that, I think I just cracked the mystery behind Ui-chan's behavior."

The club door swung open before she had a chance to decipher Nodoka. "Rit-_su!_" Mio nagged. "Did you see my text? Sawako-sensei said she'll drive us to Yui's! We'll leave without you if you don't hurry up!"

* * *

It was a clear blue sky on the day their relationship changed forever, on the day eighty percent of HTT stood before the Hirasawa household. No cars—as usual. They found themselves here because Nodoka had seen wisdom in Azusa's little idea. Ui hadn't, even after they went through the trouble of calling her before asking Sawako-sensei.

She all but refused to hear it:

"Ui-chan, ab—… about Yui-senpai. I think I can get her to talk."

The second it normally took one to reply stretched for far too long. Azusa looked to her phone, only to find the call connected still. "Ui—?"

"She got discharged this morning, Azusa-chan," came a raspy little voice. "Please… just please, do whatever you can, please."

Azusa removed the phone from her ear, doubly sure she hadn't called the wrong number: 'Hirasawa Ui, 0:11, 0:12, 0:13, 0:14...'

Beyond that little screen, three senpais ganged up boasting concerned expressions.

"Azusa-chan?" said the phone.

"Are you sure you want _me _doing this?" she cried. Wincing, amending softly, "I mean, do you really trust me with this? I've only known her for almost two years." The very notion was scoff-worthy.

"That's a long time, Azusa-chan. That's well over ten percent of Onee-chan's life."

Azusa winced; the logic was sound but it just felt wrong, almost disgusting. "M-maybe, if you heard us out, you'd understand. You'd do a much better job than—" _Me, _"—than us, right? Right?"

"Azusa-chan."

Her doubt was palpable, and Nakano's cowardice didn't feel justified yet besides: "Can you blame me? Sisters know each other better! Yui-senpai would be more comfortable talking with you than me, and besides, you…!"

_Aren't awkward. _

_Grew up with Yui-senpai._

_Know Yui-senpai. _

_Wouldn't make Yui-senpai cry. _

_Never elbowed Yui-senpai in the tummy thinking she was going for a kiss. _

"You're searching really hard for an excuse to run, Azusa-chan."

The club room, the world, the wooden air itself—frozen at once.

A declining noise hummed through the speaker. "You love my Onee-chan, the four of you. It's why you're so scared of doing something that might hurt her. Or you, or your bonds, even. You're scared, all of you, so you're scared of doing what you think you have to do."

"I'm not!" Mio cried. A wince, blushing on the spot. "Not… just me, I mean." She looked to each of them, her gaze ending on the stand-in for Ui.

"It's only natural," Ui chirped, the first time in forever. "And I stand by what I said: the fact that you care so much about Onee-chan proves you aren't acting selfishly. Not completely, anyway. Personally, though, I think everybody acts with a little bit of selfishness, even when helping others."

Azusa couldn't help but look to Mio, who looked shamefully to Ritsu, who guiltily turned to Mugi—each of them avoiding one another's gazes, each boasting the humility to blush.

"I'm sorry." Three eyes looked to Ritsu, and Ritsu stared hard at the phone in Azusa's hand.

A soft huff. "For what?" asked Ui.

She opened her mouth. Shut it. She breathed deep—in the nose, out the mouth. Ritsu wet her lips. Twice. "For—" A snuffle, gaze thrown aside out the window. "For being... s-selfish. For not caring more about Yui than I did my own bad feelings."

"M-me too!" said Mio, wincing apologetically despite Ritsu's solemn nod.

"And for…" the president added with a sigh, "for being shitty friends. Gomen nasai, Hirasawa-san." Ritsu bowed, and Ui said nothing.

Ui said nothing.

Not right away.

But when she did…

...she did not say "it's okay," or, "I forgive you."

No.

Instead, Hirasawa Ui uttered a short, soft, "_Hai." _And the phone clicked off.

And that is how eighty percent of HTT found themselves before the Hirasawa household, where there were no cars as usual beneath a clear blue sky.

It was the day their relationship changed forever.

Leading up to it, Nodoka had seen wisdom in Azusa's little idea whereas Ui hadn't, she all but refused to hear it.

No member of the band spoke it aloud, but there existed discomfort following that phone call, permeating subsequent interactions with the young Hirasawa in the weeks, months, even years that followed. A discomfort borne by Yui's sister, a feeling that she held some resentment towards them.

They wouldn't find out until later, however, that it wasn't because they were "shitty friends."

No, it was because Ui—in her mind—had been Yui's "shitty friend."

**Yui**

She remembered TV being a lot more fun. She remembered lazing about felt a lot less… just less—not pinning her heart-guts to the couch with a million bajillion pounds.

Heck, just being up and about used to feel a lot "less," too. It had before, definitely! Before… before, well, before Ui made Yui realize how "less" she herself really was. Like, as a person, a big sister and junk. Now, feeling lighter than air just seemed _wrong_. As wrong as making Ui mad, even though she'd said "I love you, Onee-chan," more times than Yui could genuinely count these last three days.

That alone helped pass the time since with a whole slew of questions:

_Ui never made a habit of saying that until the accident. Is she just saying that now to make me feel better? _

_Is it the thing we talked about before that made her love me like this? _

_How much of that is honest and how much is it her trying to get the old Yui back? _

_Am I a terrible big sister for making Ui into this over the years? _

_Am I a terrible big sister for doubting her so much? _

_Am I a terrible big sister for wanting to break our bond, even though it's for Ui's sake?_

_Am I a terrible friend for playing with the girls' feelings, instead of just bucking up and cutting things off for good? _

Three days since the accident, not a single one close to being answered.

At least home was surrounding her, rather than a white, chemically-smelling hospital.

_I still wanna go to school and see the girls though. Just to hang and laugh like always. _Those days were history, however, and Yui had to actively remind herself of this whenever her soul felt sad. If not because of her own halfhearted behavior, then certainly what had happened and the clear worry it instilled in them. Forever after they will know that Yui wasn't the forever-free child they expect from her; she was like everybody else, but dumber.

No, she couldn't go and hang in the club room with the others all day like they planned for their last week. Doing so would make them sad and uncomfortable again, not to mention subjecting everybody to her less-ness—this, too, felt heavy, but remembering the way she'd always hurt them made ignoring this want all the easier. Remembering that, committing it to memory like the chords of HTT's songs, must have been part of that intense weight pressing Yui into the cushions.

It was worth feeling this way, then.

_If not being all drifty and spacey like I used to is the price for saving everybody, then I don't mind, kinda! _

Yui's heart writhed, disagreeing even though it was just a lump of meat.

Ui peeked around the kitchen entryway, clad in an apron. "Onee-chan?"

"Hai?!" Yui threw her blanket up to her chin, clutching it from beneath. "Um, what's up? Ui?"

Still one second, tittering the next; the kind where you knew someone was faking it, and was just humoring you.

And then, "Your friends from the club have come to see you."

_...Huh? ...How?! School just got out!_

Yui must have made a face, because Ui emerged fully and spoke a million miles per hour: "I told them you were discharged. They didn't go all the way to the hospital or anything. I guess they really want to see you, Onee-chan! But, um, I'm… sorry that I did." She washed her hands of guilt.

"That's alright." _Too fast. _"I'll see them." _You're too fast, Ui. _"Got no reason not to say hi!" _You used to be so chilled out all the time; now everything you do is panicked, like I'm suddenly a different person. _That's not to say she was wrong. Just that Ui had changed, too.

_And it's because of me, _said a voice, a tightness in her chest, as the rest of HTT filed into the living room. Ritsu, arms folded behind her head, led the pack. Within Mugi's, a small white box with today's sweet treat inside. The others wanted to be anywhere but here, with Azu-nyan unsurprisingly albeit painfully the furthest behind, leaving a couple feet between her and Mio.

_Let's not make this any more painful and weird than it already is for them. Just make them leave. End it for good. End it for good! _Yui went to shut the television off, taking care to keep herself hidden under the covers, but Mio gave a start.

"Oh, d-don't mind us!" she said with both hands, then a bow. "Sorry for the intrusion, Yui-chan. Are we being a nuisance in coming here?" Mio's blush was genuine; she couldn't lie to save her life. She really was concerned here, maybe, and the sheer notion that she was made doubting her twist a guilty, horrible knot inside.

And Yui reacted, heart-first instead of head-first, foolish girl that she was. "No, not at all!"

As they took their seats: _I just failed again right here, _Yui's heart writhed, her eyeballs tingling. Ritsu guided the wheelchair away to sit on the floor beside Yui. _I'm just hurting them because I can't cut them out of my life, _her heart writhed as Azusa took the space beside Yui, for one second teasing her with Azu-nyan's special recharging energy before scooching—flinching—away from the touch. Clearly wanting to be anywhere but here, and yet Azusa brought herself not only to come but to pretend she wasn't uncomfortable by sitting within hugging range, head bowed and hands folded in her lap. She was a good kouhai.

_I can't say those words. I keep getting these chances but I just can't do it. _

_I love them too much. _

_So, how…? _

_How do I get them to leave me alone? _

It's too bad she couldn't just be mean; it wasn't in her genes, besides, and these girls were less selfish than her anyway. They would never put their own needs before a friend's; they would find a way to insist their help upon her, no matter what mean or nasty thing left her lips.

"Yui-senpai… what even _is _this?"

Following Azusa's gaze to the television, the band bore witness to a man shoveling an infinite hot dog into his throat, chomping away like Pac-Man.

"Huh. Not sure." Yui had been flipping through mindlessly before. She shut the television off, quickly before anyone could snap out of their stupefaction to catch the flash of her forearms.

Mio frowned. "You don't have to stop watching because we're here."

"Yeah, put on some anime!" said Ritsu.

_But I don't feel like watching something anyway. _Yui couldn't say that. It would be rude to her friends and draw attention to the ugly truth, besides. The same truth that Ui, clearly, already knew of—that Yui was not okay, the one thing a Yui was supposed to be good at.

"Yui~," Mugi sang. The white box had been broken down into a makeshift plate, presenting a slice of Yui's favorite shortcake past Azusa's head. "Duh-dah! The piece with a strawberry, just for you!" She pushed it forward, practically shoving it in Azu-nyan's awestruck face.

"You guys," Yui cooed, taking it in a blanket-gloved hand, and was stopped before she could reel it in. The tightness of guilt just squeezed her belly—to have such a gift felt wrong, especially before Ui's dinner, especially for the kind of friend she was, especially for jerking her friends around these last few days.

Yet Mugi was still doing her best to make Yui smile.

"Arigato," she said, placing it on Azusa's pink little lap, much to the young woman's horror.

"Yui-senpai!" she scolded—and, oh, how Yui missed her trademark nag.

Giggling, she almost scratched the back of her head, but Yui remembered what they would see if she did. "You just looked so cute and hungry, Azu-nyan."

"I—! B-but that's not—! I mean, _thank you,_ but—but—!" She was entranced by Yui's unflinching smile, an easy thing to keep up when it was genuine. Azusa really was just a sweetie deep down.

But this kitten had claws, and she lunged from her seat, towering over Yui. "This is yours, it's supposed to be yours! Why aren't you stuffing your face with it?"

The silence extended for half a second.

And in that moment, it hit Yui: this was the first time Azusa had said a word to her since the accident.

She might have realized this herself, as Azusa shrank within herself, turning crimson, the beginnings of "gomen nasai" mumbling forth as Ritsu said:

"Oof, not even sixty seconds and it turns out Azusa was the first to br—_ea'HEAK MIO-CHAN WHY?!" _Ritsu massaged her welt, Mio kneeling beside her, hands in her lap.

_You must have hated being there, in the hospital. Huh, Azu-nyan? _Yui wondered. _Only there, only worried, because I'm your senpai and that's expected of you. _It wasn't fun being a Nakano, from what Yui had gathered since they first met; she hoped that, despite having ruined their final weeks together, that Azusa would love her goodbye song.

Like, genuinely; that she wouldn't clap with a smile whilst cringing inside.

"Why aren't you hungry, Yui-senpai?" mumbled Azusa, pigeon-toed because that's all Yui could stand to see of her kouhai's worry. "You're _always _hungry, _especially _for cake."

A million things ran through Yui's mind, but none of them felt right other than the truth: "I'm sorry, Azu-nyan. I'm just not hungry."

"But…" She gazed upon the little cake, balanced in both hands, its strawberry crown shuddering subtly with Azusa's breathing. "Yui-senpai… daijobu?"

"Nani? Azu-nyan, it's nothing. I'm just not hungry, is all."

She kept a laser-focus on that cake. "Hai. 'You're not hungry.' But…" Shaking fingers pinched, and the plate bent, smooshing the cake a little. "But that's not all. What else is wrong?"

Oh, no. "Uh…" They were going to start asking questions again. "Nothing?"

They were never going to leave Yui alone if she had another breakdown. They would let her be their ball-and-chain forever, just like Ui; even though Mio was so smart, and Ritsu was so cool, and Mugi was so rich, and Azu-nyan all of the above.

Even though they had so much going for them, they would risk letting Yui ruin them further.

"Daijobu?" Azusa lifted her eyes and—oh, goodness, never has this girl looked so tortured: crumpled chin, red in the face, wet claw marks lining her cheeks. "What's wrong, Yui-senpai?" she croaked when Yui didn't, couldn't. "What's wrong? Why're you crying?"

"Az-Azu-nyan—"

"Do you hate us?"

"What?!" Yui cried.

"Do you want me—_us_—to go away?"

Ritsu shot up. "Oi, Azusa, stick to your own plan, c'mon!"

Never had she made so little sense. "Where is this coming from, Azu-nyan?"

The cake-plate sandwich fell as Azusa beat her chest, eyes flashing wetly. "Me, baka!" Mugi dove and saved the falling mess in both hands. "I'm wondering if you're avoiding us because we haven't been friends you could rely on! I'm wondering if you feel whatever you're feeling and keeping it in because you don't think we'd care!"

Azusa was practically wailing her words. It killed Yui. "A-Azu-nyan—"

"I'm wondering if you think that because _I'm me!_" Stillness. Silence. Gasping, Azusa clasped her eyes, twisting her palms within them. "It's stupid," she croaked, "and childish, and selfish and so, _so stupid, _but… I'm objectively a crummy kouhai, Yui-senpai. I nag and I snap, I act aloof and am never honest."

"You may think I hate you from the way I act," she continued. "The way I… hurt you, like I did in London."

Ah. The elbow-thing. And avoiding Yui, too. That was kinda weird.

"Yui-s-senpai?" Then nothing. Realizing the holdup, Yui breathed deep before lifting her gaze. Azusa glared through her tears, failing to keep a stiff upper lip. "You probably think I don't like you. Maybe even _h-hate _you… Nee?"

Not that it was as big a deal as she was making it out to be, but… "Kinda. Sometimes," she added softly.

"The truth is…" Azusa sniffled, gasped wetly. "The truth is… the only person I hate is… is… _myself_. _Oh!_" She doubled over, clutching at her heart through her school buttondown. "I can't—! I can't _do this!_"

Mugi's arm extended into view, wrapping Azusa in one arm.

"I hate _you_, Yui-senpai." And a sob burst from Azusa's lips before anyone could process what she said. "Because… 'cause I hate _me_, you stupid senpai! ..._Dammit._" Soft little chokes, muffled by the sleeve Azusa bit, and the hissing of Mugi's hand gliding circles into her small back.

A glance around the room—the shock of Mio and Ritsu—informed Yui that this was not part of whatever today's "plan" was.

Meaning it was her fault, and hers alone. "Gomen nasai."

Ruby-red eyes inlaid in a hellish glow met Yui's for but a moment—for but a moment transmitting to her an intense feeling of, 'Are you effing kidding me?'

"Stop it," said Azusa, growing louder, "stop it, _stop it!_ _Stop APOLOGIZING already!_ That's all you've been doing, is apologizing for no reason and it makes me _sick!_"

"Gomen nasai." It was all Yui could think to say. "For ruining you. For ruining high school for you."

A small, ruddy, runny, snotty, snivelling face leered into Yui's. "Why?! Why are you apologizing?! I'm the one who should, _I'm _the one who yelled at you! I just destroyed your cake, while I—!" She finished softly, "I'm just _me_, and I should be sorry for that a million times over!"

Yui couldn't help but smile: just as silly and insecure as ever. _It's a good thing my legs are busted up instead of my arms. Otherwise, we can't give you our gift on graduation day. _

"There's nothing Azu-nyan should be sorry for. She's a great little cat."

Azusa inhaled sharp, her eyes bulging as she heard this; Ritsu tried getting close, tried to grab her by the shoulders, tried to say, "Alright, let's all settle down here—"

"Then what about _you?!_ What the heck have you done to be sorry for?!" Azusa slapped herself on the chest. "'Cause for your information, these last two years have been the best years of my entire life! And you could quote me on that, because—! _Because—!_" Her flush took a darker tint as her eyes wrenched shut, and her words flew forth: "_Because I've been writing about you guys in my diary almost every single night!" _

"Aww!" Mugi cooed. Yui did as well—or she would have if her throat hadn't caught itself on a softball-sized lump.

Azusa snuffled, rubbing two fingers across her eyes, joining them for a pinch on the nose before whipping a glare upon Yui. "So? Whaddaya say to _that_, Yui-senpai? I have written proof that you helped make high school an experience I will treasure forever. So… so what the _heck _do you have to be sorry for, huh?"

Yui swallowed. She found the words, then her voice, and finally her courage: "This," she said, as the last sixty seconds flashed by, between every slam of her heart.

And, really, it was always 'this,' whenever Yui would retrace her steps from the accident and beyond.

"Wh-whadda ya mean by that, Yui-senpai?"

Yui looked her kouhai up and down. Cute as always, but composed and mature just seconds after having a borderline meltdown. "What this is doing to you. All of you," said Yui, then softly, "What I've always done to everyone around me."

"I-I don't understa—"

"So leave right now, please."

Yui spoke to Azusa, the one who hated this the most, but it was for everybody. "I'm not gonna say more than this, and you can't make me. If you try, I'll call the police." Azusa and Mugi both staggered back a step, pained in being shunned.

"You'll be the only one arrested, then, senpai."

Yui is steel. Yui doesn't break. She never gives up on anything she sets her mind to, and this was no different. In fact, it was easier—it required no work at all on her end.

Just a whole lotta guts. "Leave, then, if you don't want that to happen." The coldness of her tone sent Azusa reeling.

"We're not leaving." Ritsu's hands were on her hips. "Like it or not, that isn't how we roll. You should know better, private."

Yui strangled her shorts' cuffs beneath the blanket—they were her swelling tear ducts, and she was destroying them. Yui is steel. Yui doesn't break. "Why aren't you leaving? Please, leave. R-right now!"

The cushion beneath her thighs sank as Mio sat on the sofa's edge, grabbing her knee through the cover. "Just talk to us, Yui." Mio squeezed her. "I promise you," she shuddered, inhaling, "_I promise you_ we'll listen. We're so, _so _worried about you. _I'm _so worried about you, I could hardly sleep!"

"Nani?" They weren't leaving. They still cared, here and now, after shunning Azusa's emotional plea so coldly. It was too much. It made no sense. Such a deadly combination typically fried Yui's brain, but today it just made her… less. "Why, Mio-chan?"

"Wh-whatever do you mean?"

"I mean, yeah, you've always been nice and all, but why are _you_, Mio-chan, worried about me?"

The girl in question trembled, her ruddy cheeks hinting at anger while the twinkles bordering her eyelashes suggested that Yui hurt her again.

"Gomen," Yui whimpered. "That was so mean. It's just that… you're so cool and smart, Mio-chan, and I don't know why you feel like you hafta make yourself come here. Any of you! I really just don't know why."

_Why am I asking this? I know it's as simple as Mio put it: we're friends, we care about each other. _Maybe the parasitic Yui she'd kept locked away since the accident wanted them to grovel, to prove their friendship. That would be in-character.

Deep down, however, it really did confuse on a subconscious level—Mio, the black sheep of their quartet in more ways than one their first year.

But Mio did not grovel. She didn't look around the room and blush or anything like that. She didn't smile, either, but she didn't lose the tenderness Yui always associated with her, even with a gleam in her gorgeous eyes: "Why _am I_ worried about you?" Mio wondered. "I can't be sure. After all, I know next to nothing when it comes to friendship, and even less about social cues, or anything with the word 'social' stuck before it, really."

Yui had prickled a sore spot of Mio's by accident. "I-I get it—"

"I do know some things, though," Mio continued unflinchingly. "I know _you_, for one."

Yui is steel. Yui doesn't break.

"I know you have a big, loving heart for all your friends. I also know that… that you don't really want this distance that's between us. For if you did, you—one of the hardest workers I know—would make more of an effort." Damn. Mio's words were like heart-seeking bullets. "But you don't. You don't want to hurt us or yourself, and, forgive me for being presumptuous, but if I had to guess, that's why you can't help but feel so apologetic."

Sorta, but everything else Mio said… was right. Maybe.

_I dunno. _She said so much but none of it felt wrong, just guilty, all guilty. Yui hated this feeling, she hated the pain she was causing her friends. _And Mio called me out for not committing. I'm just hurting them more by dragging this out instead of coming at it with a knife. _

Yui was going to cry. The rest might follow after the deed was done. But that, over all else, had to be better for them in the long run than being dragged along, thinking they could help Yui.

Or, rather, that they could spend their entire lives helping her.

"Girls? I'm telling you to leave, because…" Yui's confidence shattered as Mio's gaze glistened intently; she dropped her face from their sight, "because we aren't friends anymore."

No objections.

Not even a peep.

"I'll come back for graduation."

"And our performance after."

"But after that?"

"We're through."

"Wait, performance? What performance?" She forgot, Azusa had always been on the ball when it came to the band.

"We're doing one last show before the ceremony, with everyone in class," Ritsu covered without missing a beat. "We were gonna ask you." Not wholly a truth or a lie—it was a fun idea they never got the chance to seriously plan for prior to the accident. "_But_," Ritsu drawled, "we can't be in a band if we aren't friends, so that plan's down the tube anyhow."

The sagging cushion by Yui's thigh sprung into her flesh. "Are you seriously giving up?!" A mighty thwack, followed by a cry.

Then by Ritsu snapping, "I'm trying to goad her, dummy! _Carrot!_ Not the stick!"

"Senpais, could you please focus on what's important right now?"

"Tell that to Mio!"

"Tell that to Ritsu!"

_Please stop fighting because of m—_a draft nipped at Yui's forearms as her blanket was torn from her shoulders.

Mugi shrilled like she never had before: "Yui-chan, your _arms!_"

Silence fell like a guillotine.

Silence crashed down like Yui's innards just now.

Even though it was too late, she crossed her arms, squeezing the horrible rotten feeling festering inside her away. The feeling instead grasped her heart, sinking deep its poisonous claws.

"Ha-have you been trying to write on them with a _pencil_? Is that what this is?" Of course Mugi would have noticed the way Yui kept her arms hidden. Always such an idiot, Yui, always always always. "Please tell me that that's what you've been do—_Yui-chan, pay attention to me NOW!_"

The unknown terrified Yui, and she had zero clue as to what Mugi would do next after snarling like that for the first time ever. Not that Yui hesitated long enough to ponder this, merely it was the tightness writhing in her belly, put into words.

Like a knee jerk reaction Yui snapped her attention to the source of the scary caterwauling, completely in the dark as to what Mugi was about to do. She braced herself for a slap. Yui didn't know why, but that felt just plain right.

Crying was never going to be her first guess, however—nor fat, almost syrupy tears to encircle Mugi's shuddering cheeks, rounding out teeth grit in pain. There were no hurts in sight, meaning it was borne of something inside.

Something which horrified, something Yui had wrought.

"You don't…" Mugi's words staggered, wavering terribly, "you don't have depression, Yui-chan. You don't have depression!"

"I don't understand," came Mio's soft voice, cutting through the screaming in Yui's head. "These look like punctures, not scratches. Mugi, don't you think you're overrea—?"

A razor-sharp gasp lashed Yui's heart, choking her throat. All eyes were on Azusa, a hand clasped around her mouth as tears fell around them.

"Yu-Yui… s-s-sen-_pai_." Azusa unveiled wobbling lips, moving to strangle her school bow. "A-are you a cutter? Is that what we're seeing?"

Mio and Ritsu looked between them, lost. But they would know, soon. They would judge and pity and be disgusted and force themselves on Yui even harder than they were now and Yui couldn't take it anymore.

"You hurt yourself to feel _better?_ Since _when?!_ _For how LONG?!_" Mugi cried, her brows furrowed in rage but her eyes leaking with sadness. Betrayal—that's what the people on the internet warned about when it came to loved ones.

"Yui-senpai… say something. Say _anything_. Please!"

"I didn't like it!" she cried to her lap, to these stupid casts making her more useless than before. "I hurt so bad, it all hurt so bad and I just wanted to stop it! People online said, th-they said that knifing your wrists makes you forget how you feel—but it just hurts! It hurts and it made me feel worse!"

"You did it with a pencil," she heard Ritsu say. "I freaking hope that this wasn't you trying to be cute about it."

Yui shook her head, snapped up to meet Ritsu's… her gutted, hollow gaze. "Knives scare me! I was too afraid to try with that!"

"Good." Then, pain—pinching twisting pain on her forehead as Yui was yanked by the bangs into Ritsu's tearful eyes. "'Cause your stupid-ass," she panted, "woulda probably done herself in," she gasped, "by accident," she swallowed, "if you seriously tried… something _so… _so _fucking STUPID!_" Ritsu yanked Yui from one side to the other.

"Stop pulling my bangs!" she cried. The least of her immediate concerns: Ritsu didn't let go, but that didn't matter, because never… never, ever had Ritsu cussed like that, or even gotten so angry. Like legitimately enraged. Yui made her this way, she broke her, too. "Ricchan, g-gomen nas—_sai!_" she squealed as her hairline twisted.

"Be honest for once: are we such shitty friends that you'd rather hurt yourself instead of fucking _talking _to us?!"

No. That's not it, that was never it, never. They were amazing friends, and Yui knew she could talk to them about this and they would probably make her feel better. _Steel. Don't break. You're steel, YOU DON'T BREAK! _Yui couldn't afford to be selfish here and now; she was so close to winning, she could feel it.

"Yes, you are!" Yui swatted Ritsu's hand away. "You're all…" She didn't have a plan from here. "You're stupid! I hate all of you!"

Four pairs of glistening eyes looked down on Yui, unreadable in whether they were upset by what was said or what they were seeing: a friend sobbing as she claimed to hate them.

Another choke shattered the tension and coiled it anew—Ritsu, eyes lowered into her hand, shuddering hollowly into her palm. "If that's how you feel, Yui," she uttered thickly, "then I'm… m'... m'sorry."

If this was about the bangs… "It's okay. Ricchan scared me more than she hurt me."

A shake of the head, still embedded in a tangle of fingers. "I didn't… come... to see you yesterday," she breathed, "'cause I was scared."

That's nothing worth crying over. Not like Yui deserved it for all the trouble she'd been. "W-well, that's no big—"

"I was scared... 'cause I dunno how to talk to sad sacks like you. An' I dunno… how to talk to sad sacks like you," Ritsu snuffled, "'cause I only know how to be a goofy idiot."

"Ricchan—"

"It was always so much easier, bein' a clown instead o' bein' a person." Ruddy eyes and furrowed brows lifted, boring into Yui's. "And here I am... tryna blame you. And gettin' angry, and hurtin' ya and sayin' awful things cuz I'm—!" Ritsu fell into hands, her face clasped tight. "I'm just so shitty, Yui. I'm such a shitty friend, Yui, gomen… _go-men na-s'hai!_"

"Ritsu-senpai, this wasn't supposed to be about you!"

"The pot calls the kettle black," Mugi cooed.

"Ulp!" Azusa didn't leave her cringe.

"Ricchan?" Yui gasped, her throat tight. As she watched Ritsu lower to her knees, Yui finally blinked, rendering her world a blurry mess. Scrubbing her eyes, she found Ritsu's damp, shuddering face kissing the floor.

"You just got into an accident," she cried, like she actually cried, "you could've actually fucking died! You're upset about something—I don't know what—and instead o' bein' a friend I went and felt sorry for myself like a friggin' idiot!" Mio suddenly came into view, kneeling beside Ritsu, tenderly rubbing circles into her convulsing back. "Please, Yui, forgive me, _please_."

Yui wasn't even angry about that.

That's just who Ricchan was, and it's not her fault she wasn't good at everything.

Yui was no better when it came to being a good friend, something she would admit even before the accident.

Ritsu being reduced to this…

...not only felt like overkill…

...it felt like Yui had failed Ritsu right back for not considering how much she… how much she _cared_, Yui realized on the spot. _They really care. These girls would never leave me. Why couldn't I trust them? _

Beside Ritsu, atop the coffee table—the reason why, cast in plaster and gauze. A culmination of Yui's thoughtless selfishness.

Somehow she wasn't prepared for Mio looking straight at her as her hand circled Ritsu's back. As if reading Yui's thoughts beyond the sudden fright, she mouthed, "Please forgive her." Realizing the depths of her plea whammied Yui in the chest—for it wasn't in Mio's nature to make demands of others, much less for Ricchan's silliness.

Which meant that Mio, knowing Yui held no ill-will towards Ritsu, even after hearing all of that, was asking her to give Ritsu some peace of mind instead of telling her that it was never a problem.

Yui is steel. Yui wouldn't break.

But she would bend over in a heartbeat if it meant repaying her friends with the same kindness they offered her every single day for the last three years. _It's no wonder I couldn't break it off with guts, _a part of Yui mused as she gathered said courage, _I'm weak for these girls. I can't help but try and make them smile. _

"I'll do you one better, Ricchan." Yui reached forth and scooted to the sofa's edge, then turned her entire self towards a worried Mugi and Azusa.

When Yui backed up, her butt hanging off the sofa, a pair of arms hooked themselves beneath her armpits with a cry of, "Yui-chan!"

"Let me do this!" she snapped, and Mio's touch was gone in a flash. "Gomen, gomen." Mugi and Azusa's eyes were wide, their hands wringing. "But I want to do this." Yui looked over to Ritsu below, her forehead on the floor. She really was dead serious about this apology—it wasn't for show, she wasn't trying to be dramatic and silly.

As Yui let herself fall to the floor, she realized she had been a pretty terrible big sister for doubting Ui's feelings.

The floor rushed up to slap her. "Ow, my tushie," Yui hissed.

"I could've helped you," Mio muttered overhead.

_Please let me help myself for once, Mio-chan. _"Arigato," said Yui, lowering her casts gently like they were made of glass, one at a time. "I mean that." She scooted backwards, coming up beside the prostrating head of Ritsu. "Hey." Caressing the back of Ritsu's head, she said, "That was for you, too."

"Huh?" A puffy little eye peaked up at Yui.

"I'm not very flexible, Ricchan. Could you sit so that we're at eye-level?"

Though she gazed aside, considering a protest, Ritsu pushed herself up with a snuffle. Kneeling, her gaze lingered on the floor before lifting aside, to Yui's, sniveling again. "What's got you all smiley now?" A smirk tried and died immediately. "And how come it looks real for once? What, you like seeing me spill my guts out?"

Actually, yes. But that's not what made Yui happy, more it was a symptom of that, a truth it spoke of. A truth which made Yui feel comfortable enough to reach up from below, to clasp Ritsu's cheek. A flush erupted upon the one facing Yui, and her fingers on the other burned gently—a feeling which tickled Yui's lips as she pushed them against Ritsu's face.

Mio squeaked behind them, ahead a giggle sighed aloud followed by a thump on the sofa. Mugi laid there, smile frozen in place with blood trickling from her nose.

"Wh-what the—" a soft smack as Yui pulled away, " —heck is this about?"

"That's for caring about me," said Yui. "If you were as selfish as you say you are, Ricchan, I wouldn't have felt comfortable enough to go and do that for the first time ever."

"J-just how the heck am I supposed to respond to that, baka?!" Ritsu glanced aside—only glanced—before staring straight ahead. "Weirdo," she laughed breathily. "Was that supposed to be a kiss on the lips before you chickened out?"

"Naw, nothing like that," Yui giggled, scratching the back of her head as her face burned. Oh, did it burn. Anyone else in any other situation probably would have freaked out big time. But Ritsu was just embarrassed, confused, and that was the best Yui could have realistically hoped for whenever she imagined the girls in this scenario. "I've always loved sharing my love with others." She glanced at Azusa, bearing a worried little smile as she stepped closer, exchanging a look with Mio it seemed. "But I never felt comfortable giving any of you kissies. Mama and Papa always said that that was for family or boyfriends, or friends like family, but only if it goes both ways."

Mugi giggled, wiping her nose. "My, my, what a pure and cute little belief, Yui-chan. I'd always admired your boldness, how you flick your nose at social etiquette like it didn't matter." Maybe Mugi envied this because she was a rich girl and rich girls had to behave certain ways, apparently.

But Ritsu still said nothing, and a silence filled with shifting clothes entombed Yui's heart. _Mugi-chan, that boldness you like so much is exactly why I'm only good for hurting people, even if they don't feel that way like Ui. _

"Was… was I wrong, Ricchan? Did I jump the gun just now?" _Was it wrong to keep giving you false hope? _The rot returned twofold, gouging Yui's innards. _What am I even doing, just acting on my emotions like alwa—?_

"Okay, now!" said a cry from behind, and Yui's face was grabbed and cocked to the ceiling.

One after another—in rapid succession, not quite in sync—four pairs of lips touched Yui's face.

Well, three actually, one was on her hand. Yui was petrified, her voice as well—so stooped in self-pity, she hadn't noticed her bandmates gathering, ganging up on her in this beatdown of affection. Mostly, she realized, because Azusa was so small, and she was the only one who clearly moved into position. Azusa, who never seemed to like Yui's doting so much as tolerate it, pecked the grey punctures dotting her forearm with a soft kiss each, soundless against the earthquake of Yui's heart.

It had to be her, though Yui could only see the ceiling, and stars in her vision. Because only Azusa could give such scared little kisses while trying not to overstep herself or her personal comfort zone in getting closer, while also fulfilling an obvious desire to communicate her own brand of care to her senpai.

In the short eternity it took Azusa to kiss each of Yui's hurts, Ritsu clumsily kept her lips pressed to Yui's right cheek, Mio her left, and Mugi hard upon her forehead. Mugi had been the one who counted down, who touched her first by holding Yui's head close, hugging it against her chest. It was the only thing that made a hundred percent simple sense that Yui lasered in on this conclusion until it was over.

Until she could breathe again.

Until she was face to face with four smiles, four glossy gazes, and four faces aglow with embarrassment (Azusa was the reddest, but Ritsu and Mio seemed to be competing for brightest tone).

"Um…" Yui now understood, maybe, why Azusa didn't appreciate being glomped. "Um, uh, R-Ricchan?" she asked her twiddling fingers, broken legs, the knees of her bandmates. "Have you figured out how to respond to that? I could use some help here."

A snort. "Not so easy being on the receiving end, is it?" A thwack. "Yeouch!"

"Yui-chan?" came Mugi's gentle voice.

"Th-that was sort of off-the-cuff," mumbled Azusa. Softly, "Gomen nasai, i-if that made you… weirded out."

Mugi hummed in… agreement? "I saw an opportunity once you explained your affectionate smooch on Ricchan's cheek." Ah, it was to the first part of what she'd said; not the Azu-nyan part. "Isn't that sweet, Yui-chan? With just our eyes we all got on the same page—that's the bond you're a part of!"

"Well, Yui?" Something in Mio's voice, its silky softness, pulled her attention away from her lap. "Did our feelings reach you?" She was smiling, flushing. The situation rendered a desperate vibe.

But of course they had. Of course Yui understood. _These girls love me, _she recalled from over a year ago, on a stage during a festival, _and I love them. _She never forgot; that was never the issue and the girls honestly thought Yui's blunders were a failure on their part.

Some soul uttered the birth of this initial realization: "We all think that you're the greatest, Yui." It might have been Ritsu who said that once again, but it could have easily been Mugi or Mio. Her brain couldn't handle registering specifics now.

But this needed to be said here and now, while she still could, in this moment of silence: "I owe you girls big time, like everything I have, for sticking by me as long as you have."

"Yui-senpai—"

"So let me tell you everything." Yui met their surprise with her own—but her heart did not writhe in protest. Screamed in terror, yes, but it didn't disagree. It was just scared, like she and they. "Let me tell you everything," said Yui. "And you'll tell me everything back."

"That's a broad topic, Yui-chan" said Mio.

"The stuff Ricchan and Azu-nyan were saying. I liked that. It made me feel… well, it felt kinda good to hear, and not confusing or scary! And trust me, I _know _how scared the two of you must have been. Maybe even before you started talking!"

"But… you shouldn't be." Yui looked the two of them in their glossy, stupefied eyes. "At least not of how I feel. It's not a big, scary unknown or anything. It's just me! Nee? And… what I'm tryna say is, in a lot of ways, I really get what the two of you were feeling."

Their eyes widened. Mugi and Mio exchanged a look, the former smiling warm and infecting the latter's discomfort.

"Then," Mio hesitated, met Yui's eyes, "could you possibly trust us to understand, too?"

Without missing a beat: "Well that's only fair, nee?" Although, this time, her heart did writhe. But Yui is steel; Yui doesn't break.

"Your plan is working," Mugi whispered to their kouhai, who blushed into hitched shoulders.

"B-but!" They all looked to Yui. "But you have to accept what I want by the end of it. No ifs, ands, or big bouncy buts."

Needless to say, they reluctantly accepted.

* * *

**Part 2 will be the final chapter. **


	6. Yui pt 2 - Because We're Friends

**Yui**

Ui poked her head around the corner, gazing up the stairwell. "Onee-ch—o-oh!" Her and Yui's eyes met; Ritsu looked back, over her shoulder, as Mugi was felt leaning aside, bouncing the crooks of her arms, reaffirming their cradling of Yui's armpits. "Um…"

She tried to smile, to giggle good-naturedly, but a pained titter was all it was.

"Do any of you want dinner?" she asked haltingly. "Onee-chan?"

Everyone save Yui gave some excuse about not having an appetite. Maybe they were too sad to eat, like Yui, the one who made them this way. "Gomen, Ui. Please wrap mine and put it in the fridge," she said with faux-gruffness.

Ui opened her mouth. Closed it. Nodded. Made to leave, and then, suddenly: "I can go to a friend's! Um…" She bit her lip. "You don't have to go through all this trouble if it's privacy you're looking for."

"And _you _don't have to go through _any _trouble when it's just privacy we're looking for," Azusa said from the top of the stairs. Yui couldn't turn to see, but despite its hoarseness and smallness, her kindness was totally visible.

Ui just looked happy but guilty, as she had since this all started. "Holler if you need anything. Anything at all."

Every word was like a punch in the heart. "Arigato, Ui."

Because she asked, her two strongest friends set Yui against her bed instead of on top of it. Azusa sat upon it at her insistence, unaware that it was because Yui felt it was the nice thing to do for making her cry.

Her soft little legs dangling nearby, like a lure, were simply unhuggable.

"May I, Azu-nyan?" Yui asked, squishing her cheek against her calve anyway.

"Uh! Um, s-sure, yeah. I really don't mind." Her tone implied anything but, and Yui realized she had done something thoughtless once again.

Especially after hearing what she just had downstairs. "You can say 'no' without hating yourself, Azu-nyan. Nothing you do could ever hurt me." _Not too badly, anyway. _But she didn't need that weighing her kouhai's conscience, too.

Burning-hot softness tapped her cheek: an invitation despite what she thought, one that Yui accepted with literal open arms.

"This is so strange, Yui-senpai," she said, laughter wobbling her words.

As Azusa's warmth bled into her forearms, snaked throughout her body, Yui felt her eyes grow heavy, and her heart still yet beating faster than her strumming could ever be. "Thanks for letting me be selfish."

"Uh-um, n-no problem!"

"Do you two need a room?" A smack, three in succession. "Ow! Quit hitting me!"

Mio growled, "When you get the urge to ruin the atmosphere with a joke, just keep your mouth shut."

And Ritsu did then and there. Yui opened her eyes, the other three meeting hers on the other side of her little table. "I guess it's time I start talking." Those very words, the weight of this moment, got her chest all up in knots.

Mugi smiled warmly. "Only when you feel comfortable."

"But sometime today, please." Ritsu went slack before shielding herself in an instant.

Mio's gaze was on the table, like she didn't "see" what Ritsu had said. "I'm scared." She inhaled, she exhaled. "I'm really scared, Yui-chan. Believe it or not, I agree with Ritsu: I want you to talk. I want you to talk because… because I've seen you every day since your accident and I'd said _nothing_ because I'm… scared." Her eyes drew shut. Although she'd spoken more than anybody since this all started, it felt as though Mio was finally really _talking. _Like, honestly and whatnot. "I'm always scared. I never know what to say because I'm scared, and I'm so, _so _scared that anything I say would just make people… hate me. Think less of me. However you want to dress it, it all comes down to judgement. It's selfish and awful and I can't help but feel terrified of it!"

That was ridiculous. Mio was the most lovable person in the world. "Mio-chan—"

"And I know that's silly," she softly cried. "But that's… that's who I am. Silly and selfish." Mio swallowed, and finally met Yui's eyes again. "Do you understand what I'm saying, Yui-chan? _That's _why I've been avoiding you. If not literally, then emotionally, but no different from Ritsu."

The girl in question winced, gazing aside despite having been forgiven already.

Even that, Yui understood. "I do, actually." And then she thought about it a moment, only to picture the girl whose legs she was embracing, her face red and wrinkled and sticky. "Azu-nyan? Is that how you feel? Like Mio-chan, too?"

"H-hai."

"Ricchan?"

"Eh!?"

"You get scared of saying the wrong thing, too," Yui clarified. "So you don't say anything, and lie in your case by pretending that nothing bothers you."

Ritsu winced, laying her forehead upon the table. "Must you say it so bluntly?" That was Ricchanese for 'you hit the nail on the head.' Then she turned her head, laying on her cheek. "Could you blame me, though? Any o' you?" She huffed, not in any sort of amusement. "Who wants to risk losing, y'know, losing their important people because of some dumb, emotional mistake?"

"'Mistake?'" That was a broad term for Yui.

Ricchan straightened up, gritting her teeth as she scratched at her head. "Mistakes, mistakes! I dunno! Their screw-ups, their issues, I guess? What if you say something that makes your friend go, 'Woah, hey man, that ain't worth my time dealing with!' before slowly bowing outta your life for good?! That'd suck!"

"I mean, I guess, but…" Yui thought back on everything that had been said up until this point—not literally, but in the panging beat of her heart. All of the emotions she felt in one. "But everybody has those, Ricchan. I dunno. I guess it's confusing if you look at it like, if friendships were that fragile, then everybody would be alone, nee?"

"I think that everybody is alone, to some extent." All eyes, and Yui's heart especially, were on Tsumugi, her sad smile. "If there's one thing that I've gathered, playing with you all these past few years, learning all your quirks and facets… and how just three days dwarfed them all in regards to the depths you each possess… I think it's safe to say that there's always going to be a part of you no one but yourself knows about."

"And it's kind of sad to think about," she continued, a lurch choking her pep, "because, I _would _like to know everything about you all! And I don't care about hiding my quote-unquote, 'mistakes.' Because I refuse—nay, I _disagree_—with the notion that you gals would leave me if you found out that I—! I—!"

Mugi whimpered, wrenched her face away. It was so sudden, startling, like the very thought of what she was about to admit had gutted her. "Mugi-chan," said Yui, letting go of Azusa to lean forth, hands out in front of her, "you don't have to force yourself! I get it!"

"No." She shook her head. "I have to say this." Mugi looked to every one of them before settling on the fists balling up her skirt. "The three of you… when we first met, you were like… like _toys _to me." Frantically, Mugi looked to each of their unchanging expressions. Yui made extra sure that the slight pain in her chest didn't surface. "You were these amusing little peons to my uncultured eyes—a microcosm of the very people I only read about in manga, watched live out their lives in my serials. To be a part of that… that was the only reason I wanted to attend public school. And I screamed and stamped my feet until Daddy relented."

"That's your sweet and generous Mugi-chan, everybody." She wiped the glossiness from her eyes, kept them shut as she reapplied her hapless smile. A part of Yui couldn't help but remember that same one she'd seen every day their first year together, how Mugi saw her and Ricchan and Mio-chan—of two of her dearest friends' problems—as nothing but amusements.

This shouldn't hurt. It wasn't Mugi's fault that she was born in a different world.

So, why did Yui feel like crying?

"You're appalled, I can tell. There's no need to hide it."

"No, I'm not!" Yui cried, drawing the blonde's surprise. "Just because you thought that way before doesn't mean you do now, nee?!" One second of silence passed, a second too long. Yui might have just put Mugi in an awkward position. "I-I mean, if that's how you feel still, then that's just who you are and that's okay."

Mugi's soft, stunned face wrenched shut and shook. "No! No!" she cried. "That isn't at all how I feel anymore, about any of you! I hadn't in years! I'm just… surprised, Yui-chan, that you're so understanding."

"It's really not so terrible, Mugi-senpai…" Azusa's hands were clasped, tucked between her thighs, her thumbs warring with one another. "I was scared of you when we first met. Your wealth made you feel larger than life, so much so that I had to be extra refined around you. At least until this year when we spent the afternoon together."

"Mugi-chan is so nice, though!" Yui said in shock. "How'd it take you more than a year to realize that, Azu-nyan?!"

"I get it, though." Mugi's smile seemed sweeter than before. "I tried extra hard to be nice and make you girls comfortable around me."

"So you're a lying fake like me?" Ritsu asked plainly, as if giving a dry retort for a punchline. To Mugi's cocking brow and o-shaped lips, she explained, "Was it agonizing, playing nice with us sloven peasants?"

"Not at all," Mugi answered seriously. "I truly wanted to be friends, and making you all happy made the effort anything but."

"SEE?!" Everybody jumped where they sat, even Azusa pulling her legs away from Yui as if she'd just exploded. Feeling apologetically hot, Yui clasped her casted legs and explained, "I mean, see what _I_ mean, now, Mio-chan?"

"Eh? Why _me?!_"

"It's worth not being friends anymore if it means keeping you guys from having to deal with me, because…" For some reason, she was drawn to gauge their expressions—Mugi, Mio, Ricchan and even Azu-nyan—all of them disturbed by what Yui had decided to stop dancing around then and there. Maybe it was Mugi's courage that gave Yui's hers, but now she felt like she'd ruined something once again.

Skinny arms looped around her shoulders, and a warm weight pressed into her hair. "Because," said Azusa, "because any pain you might feel couldn't possibly be worse than the trouble you'd impress on others. Nee?"

She hit the nail on the head. And it was terrifying. And Yui understood then and there how Ritsu felt when she was too embarrassed to think of something to say—even if it was over a hug instead of something said. "That's why you always pretend, nee, Azu-nyan?"

Her hug tightened. "Gomen," she whimpered. "Gomen nasai."

Yui clasped her forearms. "It's okay."

"I made you think I didn't like you." Azusa's steadiness was rocky at best. "All because I was too afraid and stuck in my own head to tell you that I'm afraid of being alone next year!"

"So am I," Yui found herself whispering back, her grasp on Azusa's forearms becoming a clunky embrace. "I'd noticed for a while, Azu-nyan, though not about how much you liked me. I should have, though, so I'm sorry for being stuck in my own head, too. But always, the thought of you being sad and alone and hurting next year makes my tummy all hollow."

"You're too damn nice, dammit!" growled Azusa, muffled by Yui's hair.

She giggled at the way it tickled, both up there and deep inside. "Gomen. Not for being nice, but for all the ways I annoy you." Yui looked to the three smiling before her, all of them sad but happy for some reason. It didn't make much sense, but it was still a promising sign. Most of all, it was an honest one—the most honest seen since the accident.

"I'm not very smart, girls," she said. "I always thought that it was harmless, though. I saw the way it made kids in school laugh and wanna partner with me, and how they never got mad, even when I made mistakes. I saw the way Ui loved me, even though she's like the big sister more than I am. I saw how you girls... cried with me, both at our last cultural festival and now, because of my stupidness."

"I saw all of this, and in the back of my not-smart-brain, even now, I'd always thought to myself, 'This isn't hurting anybody. We're all still friends, so, it's fine.'"

"Wait," uttered Mio, "when you say, 'now,' you mean…?"

She already knew. She was smart like that. Yui smiled, grateful that Mio understood and could probably explain it better. "But I'm not very smart," Yui continued regardless, because she was done being completely useless. "It took my little sister, crying to me three days ago, saying all this stuff about how much she's going to miss me, for me to finally realize how much my stupidity hurts the people I love."

"Nani?" Ritsu breathed.

"Ui—," Yui choked, her vision blurring. She sniffled. "Ui's had to take care of me for so long that she thinks there's nothing else for her. And without me… she feels useless. Like I do," she added softly, "when I think about how it'd be without any of you around."

"Stop it," said Mugi as Azusa squeezed tighter.

Yui couldn't help herself from saying, "My mind still hasn't changed."

Mugi slapped the table. "Stop it!"

"Relax, Moogs!" Ritsu stood.

"Make her stop! Make her stop saying these awful things!"

"You're asking _me?_"

Mugi threw herself forth a foot, on her hands and knees with one palm laid between Yui's knees. "Yui-chan!"

This sudden shift got Yui's heart racing, so fast it stole her voice in the rush. She nodded instead.

"Yui-chan, we all love you, Yui-chan!" she cried, genuine wetness lining her lashes. "I don't know what to say besides that, and th-that we don't care if you feel this way!"

"More specifically…" Mio laid a hand on Mugi's shoulder, lowering herself by her side. "Specifically, you aren't useless. That's just wrong. Because there are things that only you could do, Yui. And one day, you're going to realize them for yourself. One day, you'll take pride in those qualities, and you will understand just how amazing you really are." She smiled wide, so wide that it closed her eyes, damp stars flying from her lashes. "It's the truth, and you can't change such facts!"

'Amazing.'

That was one word no one had ever used about Yui. At least, not without '-ly stupid' following.

"Hai, hai!" Mugi's smile flashed as her eyes did wetly. "You have the drive to do anything you set your mind to!"

"And a big heart for everyone," a soft voice mumbled above. "You'll make a great kindergarten teacher, Yui-senpai. That's what you wanna be, still, nee?"

The weight, her less-ness, returned with a vengeance. "Only because I wanted to play with little kids. It seemed easy and fun. Not serious like what you all wanna do."

"Yeah, well…" Everyone turned towards Ritsu, the furthest away yet looking like she wanted to be closer, propped on an elbow so casually while leaning close as she could without being too obvious.

She tapped the table listlessly, focusing on her fingertip. "Your tune'll change once you get how important your job is."

"Ricchan? Do _you _wanna be a teacher, too?"

"Heck no! I'm just saying that, you know… that that's how it was with our club. The way you got all serious after realizing how badly we needed you."

Yui giggled. "You _did _beg me."

"Little kids are the same. They need someone just like ya. And you love little kids, so, I'm not worried about the futures of your classes."

Yui mentally staggered back. "Woah," she breathed. "Ricchan never compliments someone so seriously!"

"Oi, oi! I can be serious! Do you even get what I'm saying here?"

"Nuh-uh! I'm probably gonna screw up alotta young lives!"

"I can't tell if you're trying to be funny or not and that worries me." Ritsu frowned at the lack of response—the only way Yui knew would convey her seriousness. "Jeez, Yui. Have a little faith in yourself."

"I mean…" Ritsu hesitated, biting her lip as she met Mio's eyes. "The two of us… all of us here, really, I think we'd be a lot better now if we had _you _as a kindergarten teacher growing up. Like, socially, y'know?"

Mio winced away, gawking at her childhood friend. "Certainly," she said as if realizing. "Yui would certainly put a stop to your embarrassing announcements. She'd help me have a lot more confidence, too, I imagine."

"Oi!" Ritsu sneered. "She very well might've jumped in and joined the fun! Your reactions were golden, Mio-chan!"

Yui giggled at the thought, because neither of them were exactly wrong now that she put serious thought into the fantasy. "I bet you were really cute in grade school, Mio-chan. I'd wanna know all about you and then share it with the class."

Mio paled. "I vehemently refuse the notion."

"You weren't missing much, Yui-chan," said Ritsu. "She was the exactly same but tinier and more Mio-chan-like."

"_Kawaii!"_ Yui and Mugi cried at once. The friend in question just clasped her ruddy ears, burying herself in her lap.

That's probably how a lot of kids would feel around Yui in the end, even if they didn't show it.

"The idea of Yui-senpai as my girlhood teacher sounds honestly really fun," Azusa mumbled.

"I concur!" Mugi clapped. "Yui-chan would not only be fun, but her personality could break the shells of many would-be Mio-chans, Ricchans, and Azusa-chans." As a trio of 'Oi' resounded her smile turned on Yui without falter, even in the face of her opposing frown. "Your expression is very doubtful, and I'm not surprised; it's unrealistic to think we'd so easily change your mind with a single conversation."

Ritsu snorted. "Says the gal who was demanding Yui to not have depression."

"Ah, but she didn't though!" Mugi chirped with a blush.

"Just because she isn't sure doesn't confirm she lacks it, Mugi-senpai."

The blonde's smile remained alongside the ensuing quiet and her darkening flush.

"Plus," Ritsu continued, "you forgot to include yourself in that little assessment of the kinds o' kids Yui'd teach."

Mugi rose a finger. "Ah, that's because all the little Mugi's are homeschooled, and are raised with the inherent belief that they are better than all of the… the Mio-chans, Ricchans, and Azusa-chans." Brightening suddenly, she turned her red, round face on Yui. "Perhaps there will be a Mugi or two you'd help change the mind of like you did mine?"

"Uh…" Yui scratched the back of her head. "I don't wanna think that for sure, but I don't wanna think you're wrong and make you think that I think that you're a liar, Mugi-chan. So, I'm not sure what to think of that. Gomen nasai."

"Brain… too many think-words," Ritsu wheezed.

A pair of arms rose and wrapped around her forehead like a bandana. "Mugi-senpai, you're putting too much pressure on Yui-senpai."

Blonde brows knitted, her eyes regarding Azusa and then Yui, placing a hand upon her heart. "Gomen, I didn't intend to pressure you. But that's how I truly feel, Yui-chan, so I won't take back what I said."

"I-it's okay. Really. What you're saying is actually making me feel a little bit better. So thank you, Mugi-chan." With a shrug, she explained, "I guess I'm just afraid of becoming arrogant again, and hurting people."

"Don't you mean 'ignorant?'" said Mio.

Yui snapped her fingers, realizing suddenly. "Both, actually!"

"Y-you know…" Azusa hesitated, "you know, in my opinion, it's no good thinking you'll become the perfect teacher. Because nobody is at anything, realistically. Not even the greats of rock made the best choices in some form or another. But… but it's even _more _unreasonable to believe you shouldn't try your best just because you're afraid of that fact."

Azusa shifted away, leaning forth to meet Yui's gaze. "Senpai?"

"Yes, Azu-nyan?"

"Is… apologies if this is too forward, but were you usually so lazy due to a fear of failure?"

For the first time in days, Yui felt she could answer with certainty: "Nope! Not at all! I just don't like hard work."

Azusa face-palmed. Then she snorted. "I'm actually kinda glad to hear that."

Mugi tittered sweetly into her fist. A hand clenched Yui's fingers—expecting Mio, she was surprised to see Ritsu's blushing face turned to her lap. Her amber eyes flashing about until, eventually, a smile slowly lifted.

"You're great, Yui," she said. "And you'd better get used to hearing that, cuz we're gonna tell you that every time we see you on campus, whether or not you think we're friends."

They didn't have to do that. Yui was honestly touched, but they really didn't have to waste their time doing—

"May I pose an idea?" All eyes were on Mio, as they often were; yet unlike the beginning of their first year, Yui noticed, her face now maintained a vanilla complexion. "Rather than desensitizing Yui-chan with positive reinforcement, and risk her falling into her… 'ignorant-arrogant' habits… might I suggest we convene every month, the five of us, with something like a 'pep talk?'"

"How do you mean, senpai? And what about when we're… when we're all…"

"You could join us over video chat!" Mugi babbled. "I'll buy you a camera for your birthday, I don't mind!"

"That's too much though!" Azusa cried, blush buried in her hands.

Mio snickered. "Though, given our history, I fear we'd each slack off and run away from discussing such things. Ideally, I imagine we'd reserve this one afternoon to talk about anything that's bothering us. I think this has been an eye-opening experience for each of us! One that's made us all stronger in some way, and closer, irrefutably, and I…" her babbling hesitated, "I'm with Mugi! I'd like more of this, and I'm not afraid of anybody's judgement!"

Ritsu clapped slowly. "Bravo, Mio-chan. You're so brave."

She tugged at her best friend's ear as well as a yelp from her throat. "You would benefit the _most _out of this!"

"I'll provide tea and refreshments, too!" said Mugi. "Azu-nyan, I'll mail you the specific treat and blend and ensure it arrives the day-of, so it'd be like you're right there with us!"

Azusa's face hadn't lifted. "You don't have to do that!" was her hollow cry.

Laughter burst from Yui's lips, unable to keep quiet amidst this back and forth, the painful familiarity of it all. "You guys are the best! My chest is all full and my tummy is jam-packed with butterflies!" It was like the less-ness that had plagued her soul was the lack of this special place—the place between her four amazing friends.

"Yui-chan…" sighed Mio. Her eyes were glistening. They had been these last three days, but finally the smile she wore was real.

But it was getting hard to tell for sure; Yui was laughing too hard. So hard that it blurred her vision.

"H-hey." The silhouette of Ritsu's lips were curved upwards. "Stop crying already. Got nothin' to be sad about now."

What was she saying? Yui could barely make sense of it. Only that it hurt—that it felt so good deep down that it hurt like heck. "Gomen!" This was such a pointless waste of time and emotions. "Gomen nasai!" Seeing them hurt, even as Yui massaged her eyes they just burned more. But warmth wrapped around her from both sides. Further warmth deepened the weight on her left, then her right. "I love you all so much!" Yui didn't know what else to say, and being silent, she learned from Mio, would be worse and hurt them more—a misunderstanding might arise, like between her and Azu-nyan. "I love you guys! I'm sorry for being selfish and hurting you all and being stupid and-and—!" Yui choked. She couldn't think of anything else but none of it felt enough.

She cried in frustration.

"Let it all out, senpai. We wanna hear it."

Never, ever, forever would Yui have expected to hear such familiarity from her belovedly awkward kouhai.

A wail burst from her soul: "_I DON'T WANNA LET ANY O' YOU GOOO!" _

"I don't wanna lose you guys! I don't wanna burden you but I don't wanna feel sad anymore!"

"Then, Yui," Ritsu whispered directly in her shoulder, her arms around Yui's shoulders trembling tight, "trust us, dammit. Just trust us and Mio's dumb idea like we trust you. Quit insultin' us by thinking we give so little of a crap aboutcha."

"Gomen," she squeaked. Yui had done nothing but reassure herself these last three days, convinced that her friends were forcing themselves to care. It was more than insulting, she had genuinely taken a knife to their last high school years together, assuming it all to have been torture.

Mugi's soft voice arose as the screaming in her head quieted: "We all love you, Yui." That was said already, from the same friend, too, in the same soft, hushed, hitched voice.

But it just rendered Yui's guilt to burn anew, remembering the scene she made that first day in the hospital.

"Gomen!" she gasped.

"It's okay," whispered Mugi.

"_Gomen!" _

"We forgive you," answered Mio.

"_GOMEN!" _Yui asserted.

To which Azu-nyan choked, "Us too."

They shouldn't be sorry. They had no reason to be sorry! "Gomen _nasai!_ _Gomen nasai!_" Everything. It was for everything. Yui hoped to God they understood that, even moreso that they had no reason to be sorry.

It was Yui. All of this was because of Yui—their tears, their struggles, their concern. "You, y-y-you," she choked, panting for words to form, "all, you'd all be excited for graduation, an-and Azu-nyan, you wouldn't be _s'ho_—s-so upset, and, hating yourself, if I—if I, if I wasn't always bringing out your very w'_hurst!_" Yui gagged upon a sob, the weight at her left side—lighter, she now noticed—threw itself atop her back and squeezed her tight.

"Baka-senpai," Azusa squeaked, words damp against the back of her neck. "You just don't get it."

A hand stroked up and down Yui's right forearm, the dull burn of her shallow penciling long forgotten. "You will, though, one day," Mugi countered in a heartbeat. "That's why we're following through with Mio's idea, nee?"

"Hai," the girl in question hissed from Yui's far right.

"No duh," said Ritsu.

Azusa could only nod. Maybe she was too scared to speak; Yui felt the same.

But then: "Friends are worth it," a tiny voice said in the back of her head. The little arms encircled her tighter. From three sides Yui was constricted, but it hurt less than she had these last three days.

It didn't hurt at all.

"I'm your f-friend," Yui… wondered. Or maybe reaffirmed. Just for clarity's sake, perhaps. Or maybe it was a hope.

The girls said nothing in turn, simply keeping to their hug. Yui's tears flowed anew; she really wasn't the smartest.

Five dirty dishes and a hoard of silverware stood stacked in the center of Yui's table, along with a pile of crumpled napkins.

Surrounding the remains of dinner flanked various manga, magazines, and a laptop closed with some DVD cases laid out on top.

The four briefest phone calls, with the most relieved-sounding mothers and fathers, had allowed this setup to happen. But not before there was a house-shattering, one-on-one sob fest between the Hirasawa sisters.

The alarm clock read 13:25 AM as conversation lulled. Yui, atop her bed, gazed down its length at Ritsu knocking back a bottle of water. She wore Yui's pajamas well. They were simple enough to suit all the girls, really: solid colors, nothing frilly or childish. Down below, Mugi bounced with a big happy grin on her face as Mio polished her fingernails lavender—fulfilling one of the blonde's many cute "regular person" dreams.

Azusa spectated some feet ahead, hair down, her pink face content whilst stroking the head of Yui's green plushie. She seemed deep in thought, but not in a sad way, which was good.

Seeing her like that struck Yui with a seriously cool reminder. "Hey! Hey, hey!"

"What, what-what?" Ritsu lolled her sleepy smirk over.

Reaching to her nightstand, a forgotten yellow folder. "You gals wanna see my pictures?"

She threw her casted legs around the bedside, bending the envelope's seal as the girls gathered. Mio was the first to get there as she capped Ui's nailpolish, smiling as she asked, "Oh? Are these your baby pictures?"

"Does this _look _like a photo album?" Ritsu muttered.

"Ah!" Mugi brought her hands together down below. "Baby Yui sounds too cute for words! Nee, Azusa-chan?"

"Uh, h-hai?"

The big, glossy photos slid heavily into her palm. To Mio-chan specifically, she began, "I have to warn you, with the seriousness of a thousand Yuis—"

"I'm scared now," said Azusa.

"These are kind of awesome." Yui held them close to her chest, looking to everybody's waiting selves. "Feast your eyes." She laid the stack out, low enough for everyone to see.

"Wh-what the heck? What is that?" Mio was gasping. A lot. And _fast_. "What's all that red?!"

"Operation photos, because I'd asked." Yui pointed. "Those dagger-looking things are actually my leg-bones! When the car bumper hit me in the calves, they just _snapped _outta my shins like—!" Mio collapsed unto her lap, white in the eyes and foaming at the mouth.

Mugi took the stack from Yui's hands, her face severe. "Sugoi," she breathed. "These are the actual bones that'd existed in our Yui's legs since she was created, for the first time ever outside of her body. Look, Azusa-chan—!"

Their Kouhai wrenched away, face buried in Yui's plushie. "Mugi-senpai, I don't ever wanna see such a thing!"

"Ah. I understand. How about you, Ricch—?"

"Hard pass. Hard-as-diamond pass."

Yui burst out laughing. She didn't know what she was expecting.

The cloudless expanse outside their window had become a spillage of burnt-orange—the last time any of them would see such a thing from this very table. The school was undoubtedly empty, reason being a lone flower and accompanying scrap of paper rolled up and laid beside small plates dirty with crumbs, matching tea cups empty nearby save for a ring staining their bottoms copper.

Behind each of these setups, plus one extra, sat a particular high school graduate. "Particular," for these spaces had been their favored spots every day for at least three years, sans one.

The one four of them were leaving behind after today.

The one who, without shame or embarrassment, laid leaky eyes within her palm, choking back tears. This was one who, while still too scared to come off as needy, felt comfortable enough to whimper thanks to her richest senpai and her handicapped senpai as they rubbed circles into her back.

"Azu-nyan," said the latter, "you wanna hear something that's _actually _selfish?"

With a staggering swallow, ruddy eyes peeked up and met a pair she was shocked to find equally as puffy, adorned with a baffling little smile. A sad one, no doubt, but a smile still.

She nodded.

And Yui said, "I've always wanted to hear you say all that." A guilty grin. "I don't think it's selfish, if you can't help but wish we'd stay back. It's not like you tried sabotaging us, nee? So, no worries!"

"She's right, Azusa," said Mio across the table. "Not only about her latter statement, but… well, I'm glad we're all so important to you. I agree with what she said earlier as well—not quite that you, err, 'hated' us, but that you cared so deeply despite our lackadaisical approach to practice."

Their ex-kouhai laughed wetly, knuckling her eyes. "Maugh, I'll never _not _hate that, but…" The table thumped under the dead weight of her fists. They opened tiredly before her. "I dunno." Azusa shrugged, smiling despite herself. "I guess I have weak willpower, since I hardly ever pressed the issue."

Ritsu scoffed, leaning back all casual-like, hands clasped behind her head. "_Please_. How could you be so brilliant yet so dumb?" She grinned apologetically under a pair of scowls. "Like, isn't it obvious? Hanging out with us, you cared for that _way _more than practicing. That's all. Otherwise, you'd have left for good early on, like that time we thought you actually had."

Azusa stiffened, eyes falling on her empty cup, peering into its coppery remains. "Senpai," she sighed, a smile growing, "how could you be so dumb yet so somewhat-brilliant?"

"Oi, 'somewhat?!'"

Laughter flooded the emptiness of the club room. Silence bled in too quickly.

"Azu-nyan?" Yui was thumbing the handle of her tea cup. "Sorry for being selfish just now, and right now, too." At her objecting inhale: "This is the one day we agreed not to lie, so I won't…"

"Azu-nyan, when you called yourself horrible and said you hated yourself over the weekend, my first thought wasn't, 'Poor Azu-nyan, how can I make her feel better?' That was my second. But my tummy thought quicker, and it felt really happy and light hearing you say that. Gomen nasai," she said to Azusa's confusion before looking away.

"Since then, until now… I really hadn't stopped thinking about it. Not just about your feelings, but mine. Like, I thought I was a scummy person for being happy at Azu-nyan's depression."

"I-I don't have—"

"But after we started our little therapy session, here, today, and I stopped feeling so tight and nervous in the chest… I felt the same way I did on Friday. I was happy to hear you say these things, horrible as they were. And I think I realized _why _I felt that way."

She finally had enough courage to meet Azusa's gaze: stunned widely, with parted lips and shallow breathing.

Like she was hanging on Yui's every word.

"I think I was happy because… because, finally, Azu-nyan stopped feeling so afraid of us. Like, symbolically, nee? It was, like, how she _imagined _we felt stopped mattering more than her trust in us, at least enough to share her honest feelings. It was like… like a mark of progress for how close we've become."

"At least, that's how I tried making sense of it. I'm not very smart, Azu-nyan. But I'm smart enough to know I'm not happy because you aren't."

"And I don't think I'd feel brave enough to sit here today, talking with you all, if you didn't take that leap first."

"Arigato, Azu-nyan."

She was still as a statue—for a second, then she remembered to breathe, to swallow, to run a sleeve across her welling eyes. "Dammit, senpai," Azusa croaked. "You'll make me cry again, baka."

Yui giggled, all squishy inside. "Gomen~" She pushed herself from her seat, only to find her legs unbendable, collapsing right back down. "Ah. I'm still in a wheelchair. I forgot."

"See, it's moments like that where I worry for your future, if only for a second," Ritsu jabbed, moving to the back of Yui's wheelchair.

Azusa's puzzlement flickered to each of her rising senpairs. "Wait, where are we all going?"

She jumped a little at the pale hand squeezing her shoulder. "We have a surprise for you, Azusa-chan." Mugi's words were as warming as her smile.

"B-but—wait, what about the rest of you?! And Yui-senpai! We have so much we still need to talk about! She still thinks she's a burden, she said so at the start!"

Ritsu pivoted on her foot, smiling easily as Yui wheeled herself the rest of the way. "Daijobu, Azusa." The others behind her were tuning their instruments after Mio handed Yui Geeta. "We've got another three weeks before we do this again, and the rest of our lives to get to it besides. Heck! Maybe Yui'll come to her senses all on her own!"

"Ritsu?" said Mio, soft as her smile. "Get behind your drums. We're ready."

The young adult exhaled like a smithy's bellows, smacking her cheeks twice. "Alright, alright. Showtime," she muttered before jogging to the band.

Azusa blinked, snapping out of it. She didn't think they were going to practice at the drop of a hat. "G-gomen, let me get Muttan out—"

"This is for you, Azu-nyan!" Yui announced to a bemused Ritsu. "Take a seat on the couch, you're gonna love this!"

A wave of emotion washed over Azusa, up to her eyeballs, that was promptly blinked away. "O-okay," she mumbled, shuffling to the sofa. From there, Yui exchanged a nod with each of the girls.

Ritsu lifted her drumsticks, then clacked them together. She didn't count them in, and the playing didn't start after three. The clacking persisted as Yui fenangled with her chair, spinning it around. Laughter looked ready to burst from Ritsu's otherwise serious face, clacking away otherwise

"I swear," Yui harrumphed, "I was planning to do this neat little jumping twirl on three."

She readied her guitar, propping it on her lap. Looking ready for a battle, Yui nodded at Azusa.

"One!" she cried, and Ritsu's clacking sharpened one the second beat and then the next.

Melancholy melody erupted before Azusa, herself now realizing, _They wrote a song for me? _Something within her shot up to her throat. _They wrote a _song _for _me?

And then, Yui sang. Her eyes twinkled.

It might have just been the light—her voice was clear, soft, and rich with emotion:

"_Nee,"_

"_Omoide noo kakera ni,"_

"_Namae woo tsukete hozon,"_

"_Suruuu nara,"_

"'_Takaramono' ga pittari da ne?" _

**End**


End file.
